


Perfect Mind

by OtherCat



Series: Perfect Mind [3]
Category: Chrno Crusade
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-18
Updated: 2007-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:32:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chrono and Rosette survive their deaths. Will they survive whatever it is Duffau wants from them? AU PostSeries. Elements of the manga in a anime timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Elegy

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly AU. Odd interpretations of canon, where nanotech and high mage tech is shiny. Sequence of events/underpinnings mostly follows the anime, some of the underpinnings follow the manga. Don't blame me, blame Clarke's Law. Title comes from an old Gnostic poem called "The Thunder, Perfect Mind. "

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Duffau definitely has an Agenda.

The sun sank below the horizon, and the watch slowly ticked its way to midnight. When the hands of the watch finally stilled, Chrono felt an exhaustion so total that standing seemed an impossibility. He struggled for a time against the weariness, wanting to carry his friend, his partner to the bed they had shared for so many weeks--but he couldn't move.

It felt as if he were dissolving, as if he were breaking down into particles. Only the solidity of Rosette's hand in his, of the feeling Rosette leaning against him gave the lie to this sensation. Chrono felt a little fearful of this feeling, but at the same time complete and total relief. He had been half afraid of once more surviving the death of someone he loved. Not you, and not Joshua either, he thought, sad and strangely joyous all at once. He breathed one last time, and slid into the darkness.

A sound like the droning of a thousand bees filled the night.

* * *

"It was as if they were asleep," Claire said, her voice choked with tears. "As if all we had to do was call out, and Rosette would--would wake up. But she--but they didn't. They weren't breathing. There was no pulse." The young nun, momentarily overcome, began to cry. Mary, Claire's partner put an arm around the girl's shoulder. Claire turned into the embrace and began to sob.

Sister Kate felt as if her heart were breaking. The nature of the Magdalens' mission was such that powerful bonds formed between the members. Claire's grief was not just for the loss of a Sister, but also for the loss of a family member. A family member who might have been something of a black sheep, but was still beloved. Two family members.

Kate could no longer deny that Chrono had been a creature--a being--who had transcended his nature and as a result, had become more. "Continue your report when you are able, Sister," Kate said, feeling near tears herself. She could not cry, she would not cry, however much she wanted to. "As complete a report as possible." The Council needed to know, and more than the Council. The country, the world. What those poor souls had gone through could not be hidden away in a dusty archive somewhere.

Claire seemed to draw strength from her friend, from Kate's determined voice, or perhaps some hidden reserve, because she straightened, wiped her eyes, and continued. "Neither body showed signs of post-mortem lividity--they really did look like they were sleeping. Their eyes were closed, which doesn't h-happen very often. Mary opened their eyes. There was a film over them, and the pupils didn't dilate or contract. I can't even begin to estimate how long they were like that before we found them. There were no signs of decay, and no flies, not even m-maggots. We wrapped them both in sheets we found on the bed in the back room of the house and brought them home."

Both bodies had been placed in Rose's room, together in the same bed. A member of the militia who also had training as a doctor had been at a loss to explain the strange preservation of the bodies. The doctor had not called it a miracle, but Kate had seen the word hovering behind the man's uncertainty when he had given his own report. Kate was not yet sure what to call it herself. "Thank you Sister," Kate said. "Thank you for your report, and for bringing them home. We'll begin funeral preparations immediately.

Of course, before the preparations could begin, it was necessary to decide what preparations would be needed. Sister Kate soon found herself presiding over a heated debate. A suprising number of the younger members of the order were in support of burying Rosette and Chrono together in the convent's cemetary.

The older members objected to this proposal fiercely. A devil, even an exceptional devil, could not be buried on holy ground. (The Elder's suggestion that both bodies be harvested for mystically significant organs was firmly rejected by both sides. Kate made a mental note to find out who exactly had provided Azmaria with a derringer.) Another member, a priest, speculated that as a technical suicide, Rosette couldn't be buried on holy ground either. This theory was also not recieved very well by either side. After more debate, a compromise of sorts was reached; Rosette and Chrono would be buried in a shaded, wooded corner of the convent property, side by side.

* * *

"You will give us the Sinner," Daffau said calmly, as if the muzzles of dozens of guns were not pointed in his direction. "You may keep the remains of the Magdalen so long as there are no pilgrimages or miracles."

"Who do you think you are, to dictate such terms?" Sister Kate growled. Miracles? What could the demon mean?

The devil tilted a sardonic eyebrow. "An ally, Sister," Daffau said. "Though the alliance did not prosper. I come to you face to face, instead of waiting for an opportune moment and simply taking the Sinner, and his Contractor."

"Rosette? Why would you take Rosette and Chrono?" Kate said, her question echoed by the nuns and priests of the order.

"You found them, Sister, so you know at least part of the reason," the devil said. "Their bodies remain whole, undecayed and healed of all wounds. There are possible reasons for the Sinner's body to be so. Those same reasons should not apply to his Contractor however, and yet they do. This makes us suspicious."

"Why bother explaining to the human, Lord?" Snapped one of the other devils. "We can take them, and go."

"I have no wish to fight them, Ardath," Duffau said, casting a grim look back at the devil who had spoken. The devil flinched, and backed up a step. "This is a funeral, after all." He returned his attention to Kate. "I cannot explain these suspicions to you at this time. We ask only for the body of the Sinner Chrono, and that the grave of the Magdalen be kept and visited by only yourself, and those who were close to her."

"And if I say no, you will simply take them anyway," Kate said. The devil said nothing, his face nearly expressionless. "Very well."

All were silent as four devils broke away from the larger group of demons and took the place of the Militia members serving as pall bearers. The pall bearers and demons switched positions as if this had been something they had practiced at. The four devils bore away Chrono's casket, taking to the air. In ranks of three each, the other demons also rose into the sky, until only Duffau remained. "Sister, remember that no matter what may happen, the only miracles were that Chrono the Sinner and Rosette Christopher were not found sooner, and that we did not find them first."

Then Duffau vanished.

* * *

Darkness.

Safe and alone, but not lonely.

Warm.

She dreamed of love, and the waning days of summer. She dreamed of flowers and sitting on a porch swing, watching the sun go down and the stars come out. She dreamed of Chrono, and the distant ticking of a pocket watch as the hands crept slowly toward midnight.

Voices.

_"Do you think she'll rise tonight?"_

_"She won't rise at all. Duffau's grasping at straws, you ask me."_

_"No one did ask you, Sekhet."_

_"Rao, Sekhet, both of you shut up," _ A third voice said, sounding tired and annoyed. _"All the signs pointed to an infusion of Legion. And if either of you idiots had been paying any attention, you'd be able sense it."_

Silence, then. _"Legion. Strands spun through the soil,"_ Rao said. _" It's already completely consumed the casket."  
_

_"If there's a cocoon down there, shouldn't we dig her up Gil?"_ Sekhet said, sounding oddly worried.

_"She has to rise,"_ Gil said. _"Those are Duffau's orders."  
_

And Rosette slept on.

* * *

Somewhere water dripped, either to drive him insane from the continuous pat pat pat of water on stone, or to remind him that he was thirsty, and the air was dry. His back burned and ached, as did his arms and legs. He had awakened chained to what felt like a stone table or altar, a mask with no eye holes over his face, and the only sounds being the _drip drip drip_ of water, and his own breathing.

Alive again, or alive still. The feeling of drifting dissolution hadn't been death afterall, but exhaustion. Despair and grief filled him, but he would give no one the satisfaction of hearing him rage or scream. Jaw clenched tight beneath the mask, he waited.

"You are not being punished, Chrono," Duffau's voice said after what might have been minutes or hours.

_I wouldn't exactly call this a reward,_ Chrono thought with bleak humor, but gave no sign he heard.

"You are not being punished," Duffau repeated. "But think of this as a sort of...Purgatory. Peace is something you must earn."

Chrono said nothing.

* * *

"Daddy?" Kate said, startled when two younger Sisters let her father into her office. He was wearing a slightly battered gray suit, and held his fedora in his hand. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I thought I'd surprise you," David Valentine said with a smile. "Can I get a hug?"

Kate almost flew across the room to embrace him. She hadn't seen him in months, and hadn't even been able to write him a letter or call because of the recent crises. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to call you," she said. "There's been so much--" her voice choked up, the way it hadn't in weeks at the thought of the disasters that had occurred one after the other since the defeat of Aion.

"I know, sweetheart, I was a cop, remember?" David said with a slight smile, taking her by the shoulders and holding her at arms length. "I know how it is, and I knew you were going through a rough patch, so I waited 'til the smoke cleared."

He let her go, and Kate wiped at her tears, and smiled. "I shouldn't cry, by the time the younger sisters are through with the story, and it reaches the Militia, I'll be prostrate with grief," she said.

Her father gave her a comically wide-eyed look. "You don't mean to suggest that members of the Magdalen Order _gossip_ do you? I'm shocked, really I am."

Kate laughed despite herself. "I'm sorry to disillusion you," she said. "I'm sure upstanding officers of the law such as yourself _never_ gossip."

"Of course not!" David said righteously. "It's called _shooting the breeze._ Nothing like gossiping at all."

Her father visited for three days, and ended up giving impromptu lectures on police procedure to the younger sisters, and "shooting the breeze" with the members of the Militia. He filled her in on everything that had been going on with the family, and she told him everything it was safe to say about Rosette and Chrono. "Ever since we found them, I find my self questioning my faith. Questioning how I treated them. We would have taken them in, we would have taken care of them here," Kate said on the last day of her father's visit. "They didn't have to spend their last days alone."

"Maybe they wanted to," David said. Stung, Kate glared at her father. She opened her mouth to say something that probably would have been rude, but David made the short chopping gesture that meant can it. Her mouth automatically snapped shut, just the way it had when she was a little girl, but she didn't stop glaring. "Sweetheart, from what you've said, they'd just gone through hell," David said gently. "You also said they were close, maybe even in love. Maybe they needed being together, away from anything that would remind them of what had happened more than they needed to be among friends and family."

"It still hurts, Dad," Kate whispered.

"I know sweetheart, but they aren't hurting anymore, and that's what's important, right?"


	2. Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is an awakening while others are sleepless.

Voices came and went, some familiar, some strange. But the memory of the faces and names attached to the voices were blurred by time or distance...and she felt very far away.

The warmth began to fade, but the darkness never lessened.

In her dreams, Rosette remembered a funeral where the adults talked over her head as if she weren't there talking about what they were going to do about "the children." She remembered feeling helpless and alone, standing hand in hand with her brother in a world grown vast and strange. Snow drifted down around them both, and their breath smoked in the freezing air. "Don't worry, I'll take care of you," she promised her brother.

"We'll take care of each other," her brother replied. "Forever and always."

It had seemed like such an easy promise to keep. To stay together, and take care of each other, no matter what. Just them, against the world of adults, a world that seemed content to ignore them or push them aside. Then Joshua had gotten sick and his powers had manifested. Suddenly the world of adults wanted her brother, and no matter what she did, she would lose him.

Determined to hold off the world of adults for as long as possible, she took her brother on long walks in the woods, where they found the tomb. When her brother touched the seal over the door it opened. They found the boy there, huddled by a stone crypt. "Who are you?" They had asked. "What are you?"

"I am what your kind call a demon," he said, as if he thought they should be frightened. Instead, they felt sorry for the boy (for a fellow orphan,) and befriended him, drawing him into the light.

Their friend told them a story once: "...And each knowing that the end was near, they put down their weapons and set aside their armor and walked up into the Cavern of Night, where Shadow was waiting. She breathed sleep into the mouths of each of the Brothers and laid them both down on beds of stone with snow for a blanket, and there they will sleep until the stars burn down to cinders and the Universe falls into the sleep from which none awaken."

"What will happen when they wake up?" Her brother asked, wide eyed and shivering as if he were chilled.

Their friend shrugged, smiling slightly. "No one knows--and no one will be there to see it, except the Brothers. It's just a story, anyway--you aren't scared, are you?" Their friend said in a teasing voice. The stories he told were often disturbing, even frightening, but that had never stopped either her or her brother from begging to hear another.

"N-no!" Her brother said, indignantly.

"Liar," she said, and poked him in the ribs. "Liar, Liar."

"Rosette!" Her brother protested, and poked her back. They fought, tickling, smacking and poking each other until their friend seperated them. They paused only for a moment before joining forces and bowling their friend over.

"Rosette! Joshua!" Their friend shouted, protesting their treatment, but not struggling very hard at all. Laughing.

She remembered other things, things that once might have made her weep.

Aion and Joshua. Aion taunting Chrono.

Joshua freezing the orphanage, eyes gleaming with madness as he screamed in pain.

Joshua's blank stare and Chrono's despairing grief.

Joshua calling for the sister who existed only in his mind, and Chrono calling her name.

Gleaming walls of ice around her heart, and the ruins of a city.

Guilt and lies that were at least partly true.

"Die for me, Chrono," her own voice had said that. She had told the Sinner to commit one final sin. If he had died, some part of her would have died permanently, and Aion would have won.

He had lost, hadn't he?

They had won, hadn't they?

She and Chrono had shared the last bright days of summer with each other.

Alone together, and never lonely. Never lonely again. Never again.

_Chrono, where are you? I can feel you, but you're so far away._

* * *

On Thanksgiving, Duffau made an appearance.

Kate had been chaperoning a bevy of the younger sisters and the children's choir to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when she had felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. She had turned to see Duffau watching her. The devil tilted the brow of his hat in a sardonic salute, and slowly made his way through the crowd of spectators to her side.

The more spiritually sensitive of the sisters moved away, or reached for guns that were not there, something that seemed to amuse the devil. "Your kind amaze me sometimes," Duffau said in quiet voice that somehow made it through the din of the crowds and the music of the marching band. "I did not think there would be a parade today."

"We have reason to be thankful," Kate said calmly.

"For your Pyrrhic victory? For the foolishness of your merchants and tradesmen?" Duffau asked, sounding amused.

"Is there a reason you're here, Duffau?" Kate asked evenly. She really and truly wished she'd brought her gun.

"I came to see the parade," Duffau said. "And to speak to you."

"About?" Kate asked.

Duffau studied her for a long moment. "About the funeral," he said. "We removed the Sinner because we believed he might not be dead."

"There was no way he could be alive," Kate said angrily.

"He spent fifty years sealed in a tomb, Sister," Duffau replied. "There was no way he could have left it, even if he had wanted to. There are few devils who would have been able to do that, even if they had been able to convince their bodies they were still pre-adolescent, and thus conserve Astral. Someone with that much will, that much control over their Legion--would be very hard to kill."

For a moment Kate felt hope, hope that just as quickly shattered. "You wanted to make sure he was dead," Kate said.

"Not in the way you are thinking," Duffau said mildly. "We thought he might have entered a state not unlike hibernation, his vital signs so faint that your kind haven't developed the instruments to detect them."

"Is he--?" Kate asked, but Duffau shook his head.

"It is better that you think of him as dead," Duffau said.

"What about--" Kate began, remembering the other comment Duffau had made, concerning Rosette--the implication that Rosette and Chrono shared the same condition. She stopped herself from asking, fearing the answer.

"You have nothing to fear on that account," Duffau said, as if he had read her mind. He tilted his hat to her and vanished into the crowd.

"Sister?" Claire asked, making Kate start. "What did he say to you? I could only hear what you were saying."

Only then did Kate realize that Duffau had not spoken a single word aloud.

* * *

Pain and grief woke her. Raw, terrible and bleak, grief like a black storm in her head, and a voice calling her name. Rosette awoke with a start, and found herself surrounded by what felt like velvety moss. She was naked. Confused, she struggled against the moss, movements slow and stiff.

_Rosette !_

Chrono. Chrono's voice in her head, sounding faint, as if he (or she) were at the bottom of a well.

_Forgive me, I killed you the way I killed Mary. I've lost you forever._

"No, I'm here Chrono, I'm here!" She tried to say, but found she couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. She felt a moment of panic, and struggled against the velvety substance that surrounded her. The velvety stuff began to tear under her fingers. Instead of encountering the wood of a coffin, she found herself scrabbling at frozen dirt held together by a fibrous mat of some kind.

It took her a few minutes to realize that while she couldn't breathe, she also wasn't suffocating. She lay back exhausted, heart pounding. _I feel like a character in a Edgar Allan Poe story,_ she thought, and wondered why she couldn't breathe, but her heart could beat. Her lungs felt full, like the time she'd gotten pneumonia--but they didn't hurt. Nothing hurt, except for her hands, but even that was fading.

The last thing she remembered--Crying in Chrono's arms. Watching the sun go down, listening to the ticking of the watch. Dying. She remembered sinking into the darknes, and hoping that she would see Chrono on the other side, in the light. "Chrono," she mouthed silently. She could hear him still, his pain a dull phantom ache in her chest and back. She had to go to him, had to find him. Had to tell him.

She began to dig, her movements purposeful now, instead of panicked. She piled the dirt beneath her, slowly working into a sitting-crouching position as she dug. It's like swimming, she thought as she dug. Hands pushing, legs kicking, the movements were nearly the same. The ground was half frozen, and she had to make frequent stops, but eventually her hands broke the surface, and encountered frosty air. Her teeth bared in a silent snarl, and she scrabbled up out of the hole, onto the wet grass, and collapsed, shuddering with cold.

"She rose!" A voice said excitedly. A blanket fell around her, and without thinking about it, she wrapped it around herself, pulling herself up onto her knees. Her ears and scalp were burning with cold, and she suddenly realized she had no hair. She looked up, and felt a bolt of fear, and scrambled backward, colliding with the gravestone. Demons, three of them, with eyes that glowed red. They wore human shapes with thin sharp features, like cats or foxes.

"Rosette Christopher, let us help you," the one in the middle said. "My name is Gil. I'm a physician. The two with me are Rao and Sekhet. We mean you no harm. Your Legion will have filled your lungs with a liquid that supplied your body with oxygen. We need to drain the liquid from your lungs."

_Legion? I don't have Legion--I'm not a demon, _Rosette thought in confusion. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and backed up against the gravestone.

"You could expel the liquid by coughing of course, but that would be very unpleasant." Gil picked up what looked like an outsized black physician's bag and knelt down slowly. "Let me show you what we're going to use," he said. The demon drew out a metal box, a bag, and a tube. "What we do is insert a tube into your lungs and suck out the liquid. That's what the bag's for."

_I don't want you, or that thing near me,_ Rosette thought.

"It'd be easier if she were unconscious," commented one of the other demons.

"Sekhet," Gil said in a warning voice. "He's technician-caste," the demon said, as if that explained something. "Please, lie down on your side." When she didn't move the demon sighed. "Rosette, let us help you. Lie down on your side."

Warily, she did so. The physician approached slowly and carefully, as if she were some kind of wild animal. She held very still, and tried not to flinch too much at the gentle, impersonal touch. She almost panicked again when she felt a sting in her upper arm. "It's just a muscle relaxant and mild sedative. It won't harm you," Gil said quickly.

The physician carefully explained everything he did and why, which didn't make the experience of having a tube inserted into her lungs any less unpleasant or frightening. The sight of thick black liquid flowing sluggishly down the clear tube made her slightly nauseous. When the last of it had been expelled, the demon removed the tube, and carefully moved back.

She took an experimental breath, and started coughing. When the fit passed, and her lungs became used to the idea of breathing again, she croaked. "What the hell is going on?"

And fainted.


	3. Tam Lin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chrono has a lot of time to think, and Joshua's art improves.

For a moment he thought he heard Rosette's voice crying out, _No, Chrono! I'm here!_ But the voice, and the sense of her presence was only a dream. The only present reality was the pain that kept him from sleeping, and the endless replay of his memories.

He remembered when Aion had been his brother and his King.

He remembered when he had never doubted, when he had been Aion's soldier.

He remembered the moment when he began to lose his faith, because Aion had broken it.

He remembered Mary and her compassion, and the ancient, terrible knowledge in her eyes.

He remembered Ewan's towering rage and hatred. He remembered waiting for death with Mary's body in his arms. Almost, he could feel the sword at his throat, the crease, the burn, the sharp line of pain. "I killed her, you could not stop me, you could not protect her, her blood is on my hands, do your duty," he had said, but Ewan had refused him.

How had someone filled with so much fury and grief stopped himself from taking his revenge on the one who had caused that grief? Chrono still didn't entirely understand, even now. Perhaps it had better suited Ewan's vengeance--or sense of justice--that Chrono be entombed with Mary. Perhaps Ewan had not wanted to kill someone who refused to fight.

He remembered his long vigil beside Mary's casket, and the bell-note that had awakened him when the seal on the door had been broken.

He once told Mary that he had never really had a childhood. There had been too much to learn, and too much to do, for there to be room for childhood. Mary had replied that she could not remember ever being a child. That when the visions had first come upon her, all of her memory had been swept away, replaced by the lives and memories of thousands. That the person she was now was not the child she had been, or the woman she might have become. She had smiled at him, that sweet and loving smile that confused him, that he craved more than anything, and said, "Chrono, someday you will be a child again, I envy you that."

"I would not want to be child again," Chrono had protested. "Children are dependant on the whims of those responsible for them."

"Don't despise the limitations of childhood," Mary had said. "Those limitations will lead to greater things."

Chrono had not understood Mary's words until he had met Joshua and Rosette Christopher.

They had drawn him up out of the darkness. They had looked at him, and had not feared him. They had looked at him, and seen another child whom they wanted to befriend. One had power that reminded him of Mary, the other was full of a protective fierceness and joy that pulled him like iron filings to a magnet. He could not ignore them, he could not deny them nor drive them away.

He loved them.

He remembered the night Aion had returned. The night Aion had stolen Joshua away.

He remembered helplessness and rage. He remembered a building that exploded, and children frozen in time.

He remembered Rosette, asking with terrible, unchildlike clarity and childish innocence about contracts with devils.

Chrono had done more than make a contract that night. He had surrendered everything to Rosette, service, body, and soul, surrendered beyond the terms of the contract, though he hadn't realized it at the time. It had taken time to understand his feelings for Rosette, as if he truly were a child growing slowly into an adult range of emotion.

He remembered four years of learning. Watching Rosette grow up.

Four years of fighting side by side. Being Rosette's anchor and her shield.

Four years of searching for Joshua. Supporting Rosette when her hope began to falter.

He and Rosette had been everything to each other, friend, sibling, parent.

Beloved.

* * *

_"This is perverse! You're so young and--" Rosette said, feeling her face heat up._

_Chrono laughed, and rested his head on her shoulder. "Rosette, I'm old enough to be your grandfather!"_

_"That doesn't actually make me feel better," Rosette growled. "I have the choice between unnatural acts with a little boy, or being pawed by a dirty old man!" She squeaked when Chrono nipped her. "Hey, don't think I won't give you a 'Super Noogie'!" She threatened. Instead of making good on her threat, she gently stroked Chrono's hair._

_"I'm not a little boy, or a dirty old man," Chrono said, and smiled at her. "Let me prove it to you?"_

_"How?"_

_"Close your eyes."_

Rosette woke from the dream, body humming with the memory of exactly how Chrono had proven his true age to her. She curled deeper into the covers, and shivered, pressing her thighs tightly together, remembering that breathless sweetness Chrono had given her. Now that had been perverse, no matter what Chrono had said.

As she became more aware of her surroundings, her curl became defensive. She had been dressed while unconscious, in a nightgown and a pair of bloomers. Somehow, this was more embarrassing than having been naked in the first place.

The bed she had been sleeping in was a four poster with a lace canopy that matched the curtains. The room was bright and airy, with a rag rug over a polished wood floor. In one corner there was a dressing table, a chest of drawers and an armoire. On the dressing table was a silver handled comb and brush set with a matching hand mirror, and a little silver jewelry box. Next to it, was a gold pocket watch.

Rosette pushed the covers back, and padded barefoot to the dressing table. The dressing table mirror showed her a bald, too-thin girl with wary eyes--and no eyebrows. Rosette avoided the image in the mirror in favor of the gold pocket watch. The glass facing was cracked, and the minute and hour hands were, unsurprisingly, still. Looking at it made her chest ache. "I'm alive," she whispered. It was too real to be another dream, but she didn't understand how this was even possible.

_Your Legion, _the demon had said.

She could hear footsteps. She automatically reached for the silver brush. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it felt comfortably heavy in her hand. The footsteps stopped at her door. "Miss Christopher," Gil said. "I've brought you something to eat. I trust you will not attack me should I open this door?"

Rosette set the brush down, feeling oddly guilty. "N-no," she said.

"Good. Soldiers always make the worst patients."

"I'm not a soldier," Rosette protested as the demon opened the door and pushed in a small cart loaded with covered trays and a coffee service. The smells from the trays made her stomach growl. There was a tureen of soup, sandwiches cut into triangles, a whole roast chicken, a cucumber-onion salad, and a plate of blueberry muffins.

The demon's brows rose. "You are a soldier," he said. "I would even go so far as to say you typify the caste, even if you are a human. You should probably sit down," he said, and nodded to the bed.

Rosette had a brief impulse to argue, but went went along with the demon's suggestion, and sat down. "You said I had Legion," Without even thinking about it, she accepted the cup of coffee the demon poured for her.

"Yes," Gil said, and pushed the cart closer to the bed. "Learning that you had been infused was quite a surprise. Of course, we weren't even sure you'd awaken, but Duffau seemed certain you would."

"How was I...infused?" Rosette asked, uncertainly, and snagged a sandwich. What did Duffau have to do with this? Were these demons Pursuers? They almost had to be, didn't they?

The demon gave her an oddly uncomfortable look. "We are not certain. We have several theories, but none seem to stand out as a possibility. We do know that the strain you possess is the same strain that had been shared by the demons of Chrono's generation, but little else besides that."

* * *

"Father Reming--I mean, Ewan, it's good to see you," Sister Kate said, and drew the startled man into a brief, friendly embrace. "I haven't seen you since Christmas. How have you been?" She had persuaded Ewan to visit during the holidays--and bring Joshua, since the boy was on friendly terms with Azmaria and two other of the Sisters who had also been friends with Rosette. The dreamy, childlike young man had enjoyed the visit, as had Ewan.

"I've been fine, Kate," Ewan said, his smile a ghost of his former devious-benevolent half grin. "And you?"

"It's been very quiet lately," Kate said. "The only major occurances have come from 'Crusaders.' There hasn't even been any poltergeists or hauntings." She gestured him over to the little sitting room just outside her office. "Can I get you some coffee? I think I could send one of the sisters for refreshments."

Ewan smiled again, and set the leather portfolio he'd been carrying onto the table in front of the couch. "Yes, thank you."

Kate went to speak to the young woman outside her office door, and returned to find that Ewan had opened the portfolio, and was sliding out several pictures. Some were simple pencil sketches, others were in colored pencil or ink. "Joshua's artwork?" Kate guessed. "It's certainly improve--" she paused. Among the sketches and drawings was a paper with what looked like some kind of writing. "Dear Lord, is that--?" Had Aion taught Joshua the demonic language? The script had been carefully painted in a circle around a peculiar symbol that Kate didn't recognize from any demonology text. _Through fire she came, through ice, through wind to the heart of the world, and passing through the second fire, she found him, and he saw her, and his heart was gladdened,_ the words read.

"He told me a very strange story while he painted that," Ewan said. "When I asked him if he had made it up, he said no, he'd heard it a long time ago."

"What was the story?" Kate asked. She recalled the stories that Chrono had sometimes told the Sisters. Stories that had been disturbing because they hinted at an alien viewpoint, a system of honor and morality that fit no human pattern of thought or belief.

"It reminded me of the story of Tam Lin," Ewan replied. "Except the heroine is a knight whose suit is rejected by the sister of the man she wishes to marry, and the trials the knight goes through to win his hand, instead of a young woman saving the father of her unborn child from being sacrificed to devils." He fell silent as the young Sister entered with coffee, sandwiches and cake. The girl gave the pictures a curious look, but exited quickly at a stern look from Kate.

"That story...sounds familiar," Kate said once the girl had gone. She took a closer look at the sketches, and found she knew the order. "I know I've heard Chrono tell this particular story," she said, and begain sorting them, almost without even thinking about it, into the correct order. The knight in the story looked disturbingly like Rosette, and the man, like Chrono. "It is rather like Tam Lin." She looked up from the pictures. "Is Joshua...remembering anything?"

Ewan frowned. "It's honestly hard for me to say," he said. "He mentions names and events, then seems to forget what he's said. He is often frustrated by the gaps in his memory." Ewan paused. "The reason I came to you, was because of something he said to me."

"What?" Sister Kate asked, feeling a strange sense of trepidition.

"He asked me if the reason Rosette and Chrono hadn't come to see him was because they were still angry with him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The comment Mary makes to Chrono about childhood is a paraphrase of a line from The Thunder, Perfect Mind:
> 
> Come forward to childhood  
> and do not despise it because it is small and it is little.  
> And do not turn away greatnesses in some part from the smallnesses  
> for the smallnesses are known from the greatnesses.


	4. Mr. Blame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rosette has a hollow leg, and it's Joshua has a lot in common with that poor schmoe in _Close Encounters_, minus the mashed potatoes.

"I can't believe I ate that much," Rosette said, staring at the remains of dinner. Roast beef with carrots and potatoes, dinner rolls, and a salad that was mostly raw spinach, shredded carrots and olives. Dessert had been dutch apple pie with whipped cream. She'd had three slices. She had frequently been teased for having hollow legs, but this was ridiculous! She thought she might have eaten three times what she would have normally. She should have popped like a tick by now, but instead, she felt sleepy, and comfortably full.

"You're still healing," Gil said, amused. "Your appetite should decrease over time."

As he spoke, one of the Leeds entered the dining room, and began to clear the table. There were six Leeds, Legion disguised as humans who took care of the Pursuer's safehouse and posed as farmers. Rosette had at first worried about who ever had owned the farm previously, but Gil had reassured her that the property the farm stood on had been bought, not stolen. Oddly enough, she believed him. "If I have Legion, why is it taking so long for me to heal?" She asked, not for the first time.

"Your life had been drained, Miss Christopher," Gil said, also not for the first time. "You were basically rebuilt from the ground up--there are some things that take time, even for Legion."

Rosette reached for the broken pocket watch she still wore around her neck, an automatic, subconscious gesture. The terms of contract had been fulfilled, though in the end she had still lost Joshua. She took a deep breath, and ignored the sting of tears. Joshua. Chrono. She wanted to ask again about Chrono, but knew she wouldn't recieve an answer. "I'm going to go take a walk," she said instead, and carefully stood up.

Gil nodded. "Don't over do it, and come right back in if you start feeling worn out."

"I won't over do it," Rosette said, and made her way to the front door. The floor felt strangely uneven under her feet, the colors of the faded furniture and carpets slightly off in some undefinable way. She tried not to think about it too much, unless she had to. Her vision had changed, as had her hearing. Scents were sharper and somehow more detailed, conveying more information than before. She paused at the door, and put on a pair of boots, and put on a long coat, gloves, and a hat.

She walked out into the yard and looked up, eyes automatically picking out familiar constellations. Orion, Gemini, The Seven Sisters, Perseus and Taurus. She remembered the stories of each of them, and the stories Chrono had told her about them, and the stories the three of them had made up. She could feel him, distant but present, right now. West, somewhere west. She could feel the pull, like a magnet. The devil-physician had told her that in a few weeks they'd begin getting her back into condition. She had asked why they were helping her, but they hadn't answered that either.

_There is a great deal you must learn, Miss Christopher. All will be explained in due time._

She walked around the house, boots squeaking in the snow, and then out to the barn and back. The short walk tired her out, and she ended up sitting on the porch swing for a while to catch her breath. Gil had told her it would be months before she fully recovered. She wondered why Gil, why the Pursuers were helping her--and what they had done to Chrono. Because they had done something to him, she could feel it. She woke up in the night sometimes with phantom pains and aches, or awoke crying with a grief that she somehow knew didn't belong to her. Sometimes, she could hear his voice, calling her name.

_The terms of your contract have been fulfilled, but you and the Sinner are still bound._

She heard the door open, and heard Gil come out onto the porch. Something about the demon's silence communicated curiosity and a certain amount of concern, though Rosette couldn't have said how. "You have never asked about your friends in the Order," he said finally. "Yet you ask often about Chrono."

"My friends aren't being held prisoner by Pursuers," Rosette said.

"A point," Gil said. "But not an explanation."

"I was dying," Rosette said slowly, after some thought. "I knew they would worry, if I left. But if I left, I wouldn't have to see them grieve while I was dying."

"You are not dying now," Gil said. "Are you punishing yourself for your deeds as the Saint?"

Rosette flinched. "No," she said, and wasn't sure if she spoke the truth. Her time as the Saint had been like a dream, a bleak dream where she had experienced the world behind a layer of frosted glass. But she knew what she had done. She had healed the sick and cast out demons, and she had incited riot and driven otherwise sane men mad. She knew from Gil that the Crusaders were still organizing and rioting in her name, or rather in the Saint's name. She felt disgust and horror for what had happened, and guilt for what she had tried to do to Chrono. "No," she said again. I'm afraid. How would they react, to see her alive? Would her friends become Crusaders, corrupted by some hidden taint?

"Perhaps I should not have spoken of the Crusaders," Gil said in that uncanny way of his. She had been surprised to learn that demons could hear thoughts, though in retrospect, she probably shouldn't have been. Chrono had always seemed to understand her, had always been there when she needed to be comforted or diverted. She had known that he could sense her presence, and was sensitive to spiritual forces--but telepathy had never occured to her, because he had never responded out loud to her thoughts, the way Gil did.

"I would have found out about them eventually," Rosette said.

"But you would not be having to deal with the knowledge while recuperating from your ordeal."

"Why would you care?" She said, feeling a flash of anger at the deceptively gentle comment.

"I'm a physician. You are my patient," Gil replied. "Your recovery is my responsibility."

* * *

Kate walked up the slight rise to Rosette's grave with a feeling of great trepidition. She had recieved a phone call in the middle of the night from Duffau, telling her to meet him at the grave at dawn. The first thing she saw as she approached the grave was that the snow had melted over the grave, leaving a long black rectangle of earth. The very center of the grave was sunken in. She stopped, staring at it, horrified by what she saw.

"The grave was not desecrated," Duffau said, stepping forward to stand behind the headstone. He wore a long grey wool coat, and his hands were shoved deep into the pockets.

"What happened here then?" Kate demanded, glaring at the unruffled demon.

The devil looked down at the grave. "Rosette awakened," Duffau said.

Kate felt her heart jump at that, if she had been walking, she might have stumbled. As it was, her knees felt as if they couldn't support her weight. "A-alive?" She asked with wonder, and an equal amount of horror. Alive? Risen from the dead somehow? For a moment, it felt as if she stood in an abyss of light.

"Sister Kate," Duffau said, his voice like a whipcrack that startled Kate from her daze. "You must reject _any_ notion that this was a miracle."

"What--I--" Kate stammered, momentarily adrift. Duffau's eyes were fierce and furious, but somehow, not frightening. In some manner she couldn't name, it seemed to her that she had somehow frightened Duffau. What had frightened him? Reject any notion that this was a miracle. "I don't understand."

"I know," Duffau said. "We don't understand fully what happened either. We suspected she had been infused with Legion, a suspicion that was confirmed when we conducted non-invasive tests. Since her life had been drained, we weren't certain that she would even rise, but she did, several weeks ago."

"And you're telling me now?" Kate asked angrily.

"There was a danger that if she did rise, she would not be sane," Duffau said. "In that case, it would have been kinder...not to tell you at all."

Kate wanted to argue that, but instead asked, "Rosette is alive?" Joy and anger in equal parts ran through her. Kate felt joy that Rosette lived, and anger that she had found out weeks after the fact. Outrage and love seemed to be the most two frequent emotions Kate felt concerning Rosette, much to her chagrin. Both feelings were followed by horror. "We buried her alive, and you never told us!" She glared at the demon, hand reaching for her gun.

"She was dead, Sister," Duffau said. "Her soul had been drained, the terms of her contract with the Sinner fulfilled." He paused. "As I said, it was not certain that she would awaken at all, or if she did awaken, that it would be as herself."

"Where is she now?" Kate asked.

Duffau smiled briefly. "South of here."

"I want to see her," Kate said, voice shaking.

"She has not asked for you," Duffau said. "And I will not reveal her specific location. It may be that in time she will contact you. Do not attempt to look for her. If we sense the presence of any of your agents, we will remove her."

"All right," Kate said reluctantly. "I'll wait for her to contact us." She recalled the conversation she had had with her father months ago. _Maybe they needed being together, away from anything that would remind them of what had happened more than they needed to be among friends and family. _"Can you--can you tell her that we miss her?" _  
_

Duffau nodded. "I'll see that the message is passed on," he said.

"Thank you," Kate said, forcing herself to be polite. A thought occurred to her, as she remembered Duffau's earlier warning. "Why specifically must I not think of what has happened as a miracle?"

"Aion created the Saint as a kind of psychic trap. The spell is no longer attached specifically to Rosette Christopher, and you know her well enough not to fall into the trap--but you might become vulnerable if you came to believe in the Saint."

* * *

Two weeks after Ewan had spoken to Sister Kate, Joshua took a huge sheet of butcher block paper, and taped it to the wall in his bedroom, and began to draw. Ewan saw the picture in its various stages, disturbed by the shape taking form. Using dozens of boxes of crayons he drew and shaded a fishlike shape that appeared to be lying on the bottom of a cliff. A cliff at the bottom of the sea. If the fish had been drawn to scale, the fish would have been the length of Manhattan. At the fore of the fish, like the figurehead of a ship was a woman's torso and head. To the left of the the picture of the fish was a study of the "figurehead," her eyes open and staring, her mouth gaped in a scream.

"It's Pandaemonium," Joshua explained when he finished the picture.

What do you remember? Ewan wanted to ask. What are you remembering? He didn't ask, because such questions usually caused Joshua to become withdrawn and quiet. "The demon world?" Ewan asked cautiously.

"It's not a world," Joshua said. "It came from a world, though." Joshua gave him an unreadable look. "Did you know that?"

Ewan hesitated a moment, then shook his head. "No, I didn't."

"Sometimes, they might have tried to explain. The higher castes, anyway, the ones who can think," Joshua said. "But the humans they explained it to wouldn't have understood it. The only way the humans could imagine it was to turn a ship that traveled between the stars into a whale or turtle with an island on its back, floating in the sea. Perhaps as the humans became more sophisticated, they would even invent a world beneath the sea that was the mirror of the world on the land. Over the generations, even the demons would have forgotten that their "world" beneath the sea was a ship."

"Joshua," Ewan said carefully. "How do you know this?"

"Some of it I figured out on my own," Joshua said with a slight smile. "Some of it I learned from Shader, and Aion." He leaned back and touched the picture. For a moment, Ewan wondered if the boy were about to drift off into another daydream. Instead, the hand touching the picture curled into a fist. "I might have been confused, Father Remington," the boy said. "And I may not be all there half the time, but I'm not stupid."

"No one is calling you stupid, Joshua," Ewan said, wincing at the word "Father."

Joshua shot Ewan a venomous look. "No, they just say that I'm 'child like,' which is nearly the same thing as 'stupid', when it comes from girls my own age."

"I'm sorry," Ewan said. "If you wish, I can talk--"

Joshua shook his head. "No, don't bother." He sighed. "I should be happy they don't hate me for what I did."

"It wasn't your fault," Ewan said. "You were being used by Aion--"

Again, Joshua shook his head. "I knew what I was doing, Ewan. I was being used by Aion, but what I did, I did because I chose to do so."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from an entirely appropo song called "When the Sinner" by Helloween.


	5. Bonds of Sadness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are letters, and Joshua gets an unexpected visitor.

The letter had no return address, and had been addressed to her. Kate's hands shook slightly as she opened the envelope, and pulled out the letter.

DEAR SISTER KATE,

THINK OF THIS AS A LAST REPORT (LATE AS USUAL, HA HA). I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH OF THIS LETTER IS GONG TO BE CENSORED, BUT I'M PRETTY SURE IT WILL BE.

I AM SORRY WE DROPPED OUT OF SIGHT BUT IT WAS SOMETHING CHRONO AND I HAD TO DO. ONCE AION WAS DEAD, AND JOSHUA WAS SAFE, AND SEVENTH BELL RESTORED WE DECIDED NOT TO RETURN TO THE MILITIA HEADQUARTERS. PARTIALLY THIS WAS BECAUSE WE DIDN'T THINK THAT THE OLD JUNKER WE ABSCONDED FROM THE ORPHANAGE WOULD LIVE THAT LONG AND PARTIALLY BECAUSE THERE WERE THINGS WE WANTED TO DO, AND THINGS WE WANTED TO BE, AND I KNOW THAT YOU PROBABLY WOULDN'T HAVE APPROVED OF AT LEAST HALF OF THEM.

AFTER APPROPRIATING THE ORPHANAGE'S MONEY (50 DOLLARS AND 95 CENTS) WE PROCEEDED SOUTH AND EAST UNTIL WE REACHED TENNESSE, WHERE WE MET FARMER JACOB SACK. I WAS DISINCLINED TO NAME MYSELF AS A MEMBER OF THE MADGALEN ORDER, GIVEN THE RIOTS THAT HAD OCCURRED (AND THE FACT THAT I WASN'T IN UNIFORM), BUT CHRONO INTRODUCED US BOTH AS MILITIA MEMBERS WHO HAD RECENTLY BEEN ON A MISSION. THIS INFORMATION WAS WELL RECIEVED BY MR. SACK, HOWEVER, AS MR. SACK HAD HAD SEVERAL POSITIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH MILITIA MEMBERS IN THE PAST.

MR. SACK AND HIS FAMILY OFFERED US DINNER, AND LET US STAY A NIGHT IN THEIR BARN. WE TRADED THE JUNKER AS RENT ON A HOUSE THAT HAD BELONGED TO JACOB SACK'S GRANDMOTHER. THE OLD HOUSE HAD BEEN REPUTED TO BE HAUNTED, AND WE HAD OFFERED TO INVESTIGATE. MR. SACK IS A BAPTIST, AND WASN'T SURE THAT A CATHOLIC EXCORCISM WOULD MUCH GOOD FOR HIS GRANDMOTHER, BUT LET US GIVE IT A TRY.

THE HOUSE HAD TWO BEDROOMS, A LIVING ROOM, A KITCHEN, AND AN OUTHOUSE. THERE WAS ALSO A WELL-PUMP IN THE BACK YARD. IT HAD A PORCH THAT TOOK UP THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE, A CHICKEN COOP, AND A SHED.

HOUSE WAS HAUNTED, BUT IT WAS ONLY SPIRITUAL RESIDUE FROM A MURDER THAT HAD TAKEN PLACE AS A RESULT OF A FEUD BETWEEN THE TANS AND THE SACKS. SUSIANA TAN, (JACOB SACK'S GRANDMOTHER) SHOT AND KILLED TWO OF HER BROTHERS AND HER FATHER, AFTER THEY HAD KILLED HER HUSBAND, EASAU SACK. THE UNDER-PINNINGS OF THE FEUD HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH AN ALLEGEDLY STOLEN RIFLE, FIVE ACRES OF LAND, AND THE CORRECT OWNERSHIP OF A WANDERING COW. SUSIANA'S HOUSE STOOD ON THE QUESTIONED FIVE ACRES. WE WERE ABLE TO PERFORM THE EXCORCISM WITHOUT DESTROYING ANYTHING (I BET YOU'RE REALLY SURPRISED ABOUT THAT, SISTER KATE). MR. SACK GAVE US SUPPLIES AND MADE PERIODIC VISITS TO SEE HOW WE WERE GETTING ALONG.

OF COURSE, YOU PROBABLY KNOW ABOUT MOST OF THIS. MR. SACK WOULD HAVE CALLED OR WRITTEN TO THE NEW YORK ORDER AFTER HE FOUND US.

SINCERELY, ROSETTE CHRISTOPHER (signature)

PS. PLEASE GIVE AZMARIA, CLARE, ANNE, BETH, MARY AND JOSHUA MY LOVE.

* * *

_Do your duty as a soldier._

Joshua frowned at the words he'd just typed. They didn't belong there, and had nothing to do with what he had been trying to write. There was some disconnected wiring in his head that caused him to type odd, random phrases without realizing it. He had no idea of what caused it, and he hadn't told anyone about it, because he didn't want Ewan or anyone else to worry. It seemed harmless, if annoying, so he simply took extra precautions while editing. Joshua suspected that it might be some kind of after effect from Chrono's horns.

Thinking of the horns, he reached up to touch the still sensitive skin where the horns had been embedded. He remembered the feeling of the roots digging into his scalp, the distant hum of Pandaemonium. Wearing the horns had hurt, but there had been so much power just within reach, and so easy to use.

_That's just **mean **Billy! It's not like I get sick on purpose! _The memory made him flinch a little. His memory of that final night at Seventh Bell were still hazy, but he remembered the first time he stopped someone. It didn't surprise Joshua in the slightest that summoned demons went berserk so often. A demon might have the same passions, hatreds and fears a human did, and might be more likely to act on impulse than a human would, but human thought was like radio static. The noise Joshua had picked up via the horns had been nearly unbearable at times.

He tugged the paper out of the typewriter, and set it face down on the stack of his previous writing, before flipping the stack over so he could read through it. The phrase appeared randomly through out the twenty or so pages he'd typed since this morning. Wonderful. "Maybe I could get a wrap for my head and become a _medium,_" Joshua muttered disgustedly. "I have the spirit writing down, anyway." He slapped the stack down onto the table, and stood up to stretch.

The gaps in his memory were beginning to close up, though there were still so many pieces missing Joshua thought he might never get them back. He remembered the Sinners and Aion. He remembered Rosette and Chrono. He remembered fighting with Chrono, and shooting at Rosette, and wished he didn't. When those memories in particular had returned, he'd nearly had hysterics, because while he remembered the battle, he couldn't remember whether or not he'd killed them.

(He still didn't quite believe Ewan's assurances.)

Joshua scribbled a note for Ewan, in case the former Militia member came back before he did. He grabbed one of his note books, a few pencils and an eraser before heading out to the local deli for a bite to eat. The sky was overcast and cold, and the wind hinted at the possibility of rain. Spring has sprung, a memory of Shader's voice said.

He liked having the freedom to just go out on walks by himself, something he hadn't been able to do for a very long time. There had always been the danger of discovery, of fits and illness that kept him helpless and dependant on limiters and keepers. Joshua smiled to himself, and refrained from waving to the person he suspected was tailing him. _I still have keepers and limiters,_ he thought. _The leash has just gotten a little longer, that's all._

The bell rang when he entered Kaplan's Delicatessen. Sara Kaplan, the owner, looked up with a smile. "Hello Joshua," she said. "You want your usual?"

"A sandwich, a bowl of your chicken soup, and a bottle of orange soda," Josh agreed.

As Sara made his sandwich, the bell rang a second time, and an oddly familiar looking boy of about ten entered the deli. The boy wore a cap, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, and there was something strangely feline about his features. The boy's eyes lit on Joshua, and flashed with recognition. "Joshua!" The boy said in Shader's voice. Joshua's heart stopped.

_"Auha re?"_ (Is that you?) Joshua asked in a language he hadn't heard or spoken in months.

The "boy" laughed and pounced, wrapping him in one of her trademark bonecrushing hugs. _"Ka, ka auha nes. Amasa?"_ (Yes, yes this is me. Who else?) She held him at armslength, teary eyed and happy. "You look good, Joshua," she said. "I missed you so much!"

"I missed you too," Joshua said in a thick voice. Tears were stinging his eyes. "Where have you been?"

"Here and there, to and fro," Shader said with a gamin grin.

"Friend of yours, Joshua?" Sara asked as she set his lunch tray on the counter.

"_Ka_\--I mean yes," Joshua said. "This is Shader. Shader, this is Sara."

Sara's eyebrows rose at the odd name, but she smiled. "Hello."

"Pleased to meet you," Shader said, then let out a little squeak as she noticed the deli menu. "Ooo, you have knishes! I'll take a corned beef knish and a potato one!"

Once Shader got her knishes, and a cherry soda, and Joshua had payed for his lunch, they retreated to one of the booths. "How did you find me?" Joshua asked.

"It wasn't that hard," Shader said. "I knew you'd be on the east coast, where the Magdalens are stronger, and I knew they'd feel responsible for you. I cheated a little bit, though. I hired a detective."

She has access to Aion's emergency accounts, Joshua remembered. Fiore had also had access, but it had been Shader who kept the books and made investments in Aion's name. "Why--why were you looking for me?" Joshua asked. I'm not any use to you. I'm barely any use to myself.

"My brothers are dead. You're the only family I have left," Shader said lowly.

"Don't," Joshua said, voice raw, and a little too loud. Shader flinched, sensing the pain and anger behind the word. Don't manipulate me, he meant. Don't lie to me anymore.

"You're family," Shader said. "Sometimes, being family hurts, but that doesn't make you or I any less family, and I have no where else to go."

"I can't promise anything," Joshua said. "I--we'll have to talk to Ewan, the man who is acting as my guardian."

* * *

Chrono curled tighter and tighter within himself, becoming deaf, blind, dumb, as he slid down and down toward the center of his self. He starved himself of Astral, refusing to let his body draw strength from the energy of the life-death cycle. We are not of this world, Chrono. Come home, my prodigal brother. He wrapped mourning around himself, and retreated to Mary's (Rosette's) tomb, surrounded by a thousand dark and shining memories. _Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum..._

_Do your duty as a soldier..._

"Damn you to hell!" The young soldier of the Madgalens said. The soldier's brother (partner) snorted with amusement at that, which just made the young soldier glare. "You know what I mean! Dammit, we are not burying you like some kind of heathen sacrifice!"

Chrono allowed himself a small smile. "I'd only be a sacrifice if you actually killed me," he pointed out reasonably.

"Well, I'm not going to do that either," the soldier growled. "I'm not going to kill a man who won't fight back. And I'm not going to bury you alive either!"

"What will you do then, take me prisoner? Lock me up somewhere? Let me sleep beside Mary and you'll have accomplished the task."

_Do your duty as a soldier..._

"Destroy the Creche?" Chrono asked.

"They're going to be culled anyway," Aion said. "You heard the Elders. All the generations after 260 are slated for termination. They're afraid of us."

"Afraid of you." Chrono said. Something had gone wrong during the rite of tuning, Chrono didn't know what though. One moment he had been waiting with his agemates, the next soldiers had entered the chamber, and Aion had been screaming in his head, telling him to run. So he had run from the soldiers, the screams of his agemates ringing in his ears. So few had escaped from that massacre, to hide in the outer sectors of Pandaemonium, areas that had been abandoned due to damage, but had the benefit of being more or less hidden from surveillance.

"Of us," Aion said insistantly. "I reached a forbidden level, and for that, the elders want to destroy us all." Aion looked away for a moment, as if listening for something that Chrono couldn't hear. "We need this distraction, Chrono, or we'll never be able to escape."

Chrono bowed his head, and knelt at Aion's feet. The formal gesture steadied him, and kept him from shattering with emotions he couldn't name. "Aion," he said. "I am your soldier." _You are my King._

He heard rather than saw Aion's smile. "My brother," Aion said, and pulled Chrono into a hard embrace. "We need to do the unthinkable to accomplish the unthinkable, do you understand?"

"I understand," Chrono said. "I'll do it."

"We'll do it together."

Slayer of a hundred thousand, so that a mere two thousand could escape their execution. "This is a revolution, Chrono!" Aion had said. "Pandaemonium must die if we're to be free!" In the end, they had only been six, and six from two thousand had been too high a price, and after that, the sacrifice of one had been unthinkable.

_Do your duty as a soldier..._

The house was quietly furious, wrapped up in a nightmare of the past. Chrono could sense the betrayal and grief that had soaked like blood into the wood, and kept the living away. "Is there anything you'll be needing? To lay the haunt?" Jacob Sacks asked, glancing between the two of them.

Rosette shook her head. "We'll be fine." She smiled slightly, and glanced at Chrono. "What do you think?"

"Just don't make the house collapse," Chrono murmured, then said reassuringly to the farmer who shot him a confused, worried look. "It's a private joke."

Hand in hand, they walked up to the house slowly, because the pain the house exuded created an invisible barrier that repelled them. Chrono could hear Jacob exclaim in surprise. "No one's been able to get that close for years!"

"Chrono," Rosette said quietly. "Say the rite with me." She set her foot on the front step, and her grip on Chrono's hand tightened. She began to chant, and Chrono accompanied, a half step behind her. The dead woman's pain surrounded them, and in some sense recognized them.

The words came, as they sometimes did. Chrono's free hand lifted, fingers spread (Rosette's own hand rising up in a similar gesture). "Sister-soldier, your battle is done, let your pain be ended, and thus break the bonds of sadness."

"Amen," they both said, and closed their hands into fists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I gave the demons a language I made up out of whole cloth.
> 
> Rosette writes in all caps because I'm assuming that the Order teaches its members to write reports in all-caps. I'm assuming this because it was standard procedure for the police to write this way at one time ( some older police officers still do this, though with the computer age, this is falling out of use.) The reason why they wrote in all caps is because it's easier to read all cap block print than someone's horrible chicken-scratch handwriting.
> 
> Before anyone can ask or be indignant, no, I'm not giving Chrono and Rosette super-sekrit powers of exorcism.
> 
> Paraphrases and quotes: I quote Ave Maria, and I paraphrased Chrono's line in vol. 8 of the manga.


	6. Coup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Duffau stops gold bricking, and Ewan isn't happy about Shader.

By the end of February, Gil judged her well enough to begin getting back into condition. He sent her on long walks with padded weights wrapped around her wrists and ankles, and she helped with chores around the farm. Once Gil discovered that Chrono used to train with her, and had taught her some very basic sword drills and exercises, she soon found herself facing off against one of the Leeds with wooden swords or staves. She would have liked to have had a shooting range set up instead, but this was vetoed by Gil. "Ordinary firearms don't have the stopping power to take down a devil, and you don't currently have access to Madgalen Order materiel," he had said.

"Why are you going to the trouble, anyway?" Rosette had asked.

"Because those were Duffau's orders--and because you'd be going out of your mind, if we didn't give you something to do," Gil had replied.

The obstacle course changed each time she ran it. Size, the difficulty and variety of obstacles, the direction she had to run it, the order she had to run it in. This time it spread over half an acre, most of the west field. Three of the Leeds were out on the course, armed with wooden staves with padded ends.

Rosette gripped her own staff, and bounced on the balls of her feet. At the signal she darted forward, straight up a short ramp, and jumping the gap to the greased slide on the other side. She managed to keep her feet, and kept going. _I hate that thing!_

The first Leed charged and swung at her. Rosette blocked and tried a disarm, but nearly lost her staff instead when the Leed tried to tangle its staff with hers. She twisted and kicked and the Leed went down, just as a second Leed tried to take her head off. She poked the second Leed hard in the gut, bashed him over the head, and took off.

The next major obstacle was a "bridge" of railroad ties with gaps between them just big enough to snag a foot if you weren't careful. After the bridge was another ramp, this one with a four foot drop into a mudpit that tended to vary in depth. It was knee deep this time.

The third Leed attacked while she was trying to clamber out of the mudpit, and she nearly lost her staff again. She knocked the Leed's legs out from under him, and dragged him into the pit with her. The Leed got in a lucky shot, splitting her lip before she got a hold on him that he couldn't break and he yielded.

She scrambled out of the mud pit, stumble-running for the next obstacle, a wall with ropes hanging off the side. Since sometimes the ropes weren't tied, she gave them all a good tug before climbing the rope to the top of the wall. After the wall she jumped over rails that had been set on top of cinderblocks. She knocked over two of the last rails, but otherwise managed not to break her neck.

It took her thirty minutes to travel the entire course. At the end, she collapsed in the grass, breathing hard, soaked with sweat and mud, but all in all, feeling very proud of herself. A couple months ago, she would have been lucky to get through it in a hour. "This reminds me of the training room at the New York branch," she said to Gil.

"That's hardly surprising," Gil said, looking amused. He seemed about to say more, when he suddenly frowned and looked back toward the house.

Rosette, feeling a sudden, impossible chill given the heat of the early summer sun, sat up. She almost asked a question, but Gil waved her into silence. Someone--Sekhet--came running out of the house. "Gil," the devil shouted. "He's moving! I just got the alert."

"Miss Christopher," Gil said. "We have to leave this place very quickly. My Lord Duke has been summoned by the Regents. Undoubtedly they wish to question him about his recent activities--and if they knew the whole of them, they would ask for his life. He will not give them a chance to ask--do you understand?"

"I--I think so," Rosette said hesitantly. "This is some kind of--revolution?" She knew from things that Gil had said that Duffau had been goldbricking--deliberately stalling or reinterpreting his orders concerning herself and Chrono.

"In a way. We can't truly revolt against Pandaemonium, however. She is our mother, our creator." Gil held out his hand, and she took it, letting him help her to her feet. "Duffau believes that the elders are not acting in the best interest of Pandaemonium."

"Gil, we can tell her everything when we get to Cathedral Rock!" Sekhet said. "We have to get out of here!" To Rosette's surprise--and loud objections--he swept her up over his shoulder, and took off for the house, Gil keeping pace easily. "Sorry," he said when he set her back down on the porch. "We really don't have time. The Rock has a barrier that should block the geas transmission."

"We hope," Gil said, sounding grim.

* * *

Duffau looked out over the cold, orderly beauty of Pandaemonium. For a moment, he craved the feral disorder of the mountains of red stone he had recently come from. In those mountains several great astrallines met and formed vortices so strong that even the most spirtually dense human could sense it. The often hostile entities that gathered near those vortices were a small price to pay for the stark, wind-carved beauty of the northern Sonoran desert. _How strange that a desert should seem more alive than You_, Duffau thought. Pandaemonium didn't answer--She seldom did--but he almost thought he could feel Her listening.

_Lillith, does some part of you care that one of your two sons still lives?_

_Lillith, why is the Forbidden Zone forbidden?_

He had spent fifty years mystified by puzzles his soldier-caste mind wasn't truly equipped to deal with. He had spent somewhat less than fifty years wondering why and how the Core had spoken to him. The Core generally spoke only to the technicians, and never addressed them or the elders by name. Yet one evening, fifty years ago, She had spoken to him. "Duke Duffau," She had said. Her eyes had been open and lucid. Aware. "Contact has been established."

He had been so shocked that he had asked a question before he could even wonder at it. "With whom?"

_"Datalink between Core-Record achieved. Downloading to Record 'Mary Madgalene'...Download aborted,"_ Lillith had said, and then smiled. _"Reference Akashic Record. Reference Madgalen Order. Reference Mary Madgalene. Aion is frightened. You should be too, Duke Duffau."_

She had only spoken to him a few more times after that, usually warnings, or non-sequiturs that turned out to be warnings. He learned what he could from the technicians, and hid what he knew from the elders, sensing that they would object to a soldier--even a general--going beyond the bounds of his caste. That had been the start of the research station, the secret research station he had established, without permission from the elders and Regents. While he hunted the Sinners, who at times seemed to have a preternatural ability to evade his Pursuers, he also sought apostates and malcontents among the technician and engineering castes. Individuals with a curiousity for the World Above, and who felt discontented with the restrictions and limitations on their research by the elders and Pandaemonium.

In order to defeat the Sinners, he had to understand them. He had to understand what they were, and why they were different--why Aion and Chrono were so different, so powerful.

Duffau had eventually come to feel a certain grudging admiration for Aion's strategy. Aion might have been mad, but he had been no fool. He had used the tactics of a weaker opponent against a greater, and time and again, had caused the blade of vengeance to turn in the wielder's hand. If Aion had not reached the Forbidden Zone, Duffau suspected that Aion would have become a greater general than Othinn One-Eyed--Duffau's old preceptor--himself.

Aion had killed the Queen, and destroyed the Creche, and his most recent and final attack had severely wounded the Core. In the past five decades, more damage had been done to Her than in the past thousand decades. More and more demons were being forced to evacuate the demon-world as more and more sectors died. As you intended, Sinner, soon we too will have no place in this world to call home.

Duffau smiled grimly as he entered the lift that would take him down to the Queen Chamber. How ironic that Pandaemonium owed Her continued existence to a traitor and his Contractor. And not just any traitor, but the very one who rendered Her barren. Chrono had destroyed every last one of her wombs, razed the nurseries, and burned the legacy banks. The attack had been shocking yet bewildering, because the children killed had been condemned by the Elders.

Then Aion had killed the Queen, and Duffau realized that the attacks had been a double-feint. Both had been designed to create the maximum in confusion and destruction so that the Sinners would have enough time to get one of the orbitals running. More than five decades had passed since that day, but Duffau fancied that he could still smell the blood and ash, as if the Chamber had been soaked in the miasma of death. He bowed formally to the empty throne, and knelt on one knee, head bowed. The Regents didn't keep him cooling his heels for very long--one did not ask the paramount general to hurry up and wait.

"My Lord Duke," Louhi the First Regent began. "We've summoned you here to account for your recent activities."

"I will answer to best of my abilities, my Lords," Duffau said. "I swear that all I have done has been done in the name of the People." He hid his smile as the others stirred, clearly disturbed by his word choice. The proper formula was _'all I have done had been in the name of Pandaemonium.'_ It would be the only warning the elders would recieve.

"Why haven't the Sinner Chrono and his Contractor been brought to Us?" The Second Regent asked.

"My Lord, my orginal mission statement was to apprehend the Sinners. My mission was for the most part successful, but only through the aid of the Sinner Chrono and his Madgalen. I believe his assistance should be repaid by a mitigation of his sentence, which you have not rescinded." A deep breath. "He is being held in a safe place, and given that he is currently catatonic, I feel he is not a threat."

"Not a threat?" An elder cried out furiously. "He murdered a hundred thousand brothers!"

"Most of them were children who were going to be culled, and none of them were his agemates," Duffau pointed out.

"He aided Aion and the other Sinners!" Another elder said.

"He also slew Aion, nearly at the cost of his own life."

"He should have joined Aion in death!" The First Regent said.

"I regret to say that I do not agree, my Lord," Duffau said calmly, and rose to his feet. As he did so, the Queen Chamber suddenly filled with the members of his personal cadre.

The mutter of unease rose, and the elders moved closer together, drawing away from the hard-eyed soldiers. "What is the meaning of this?" Louhi demanded angrily. His eyes however, said that he already knew.

"My Lords, this is a coup ďétat," Duffau said, and smiled when the Regent tried to invoke the geas, and failed.

* * *

"Shader, I hope you're going to put my typewriter back together," Joshua said. The demon had taken one look at the typewriter and decided to take it apart. _Like it was one of her puzzles!_ She had ignored his protests, promising him to put it back together better than new, but Joshua wasn't sure about that. Sometimes, some of her "improvements" were a little frightening.

"Don't worry about it," Shader said breezily. Then her ears flicked, and she looked toward the door. "Someone's coming," she said a good ten seconds before the lock turned, and the door opened.

"Joshua?" Ewan said as he entered the room--and froze as he spotted Shader.

His hand reached for his coat pocket, and Joshua immediately rose to stand in front of Shader. "I'm hoping it's all right if Shader can stay here for a while. If not, we'll be leaving." Joshua kept his voice calm, and made eye contact. Always be polite, Aion would tell him. But assertive. Tell them what they'll do, don't wait for them to tell you. If they underestimate you, so much the better. Joshua remembered calmly explaining that no, Master Aion wasn't in, but he'd be happy to take a message, to a viscount and his cadre. But it wasn't a bluff, back then.

Ewan took his hand away from his pocket, and carefully closed the door behind him. "That won't be necessary, Joshua. She can stay here," he said. "I simply didn't expect to find her here." The look Ewan gave the both of them invited an explanation.

Joshua stepped aside, glancing at the devil.

"I didn't have anywhere else to go," Shader said quietly. "And frankly, Joshua needs me."

"Needs you," Ewan echoed. "And why would that be?"

"Joshua has some minor brain damage as a result of wearing Chrono's horns. Humans don't have the medical technology to map out the problem areas, or repair them. I don't have all the necessary tools, but I can do a better job than butchers and barbers."

"Shader, barbers haven't done surgery in centuries," Joshua said, and smiled at her when she sniffed. "How was your visit?" He said to Ewan. He didn't expect the shadow that crossed the former priest's face.

"Joshua, I have some news that you might find upsetting." Ewan glanced at Shader, who didn't take or ignored the hint that this would be a private exchange.

"What's wrong?" Joshua asked, sitting back down on the couch.

"Your sister...is alive."

"Rosette...Rosette is alive?" Joshua asked. He wondered if he were dreaming again. He wondered if he were awake, and still in the house in San Francisco. Any moment, Aion would come through the door, looking cool and elegant in one of his suits, with the evening paper tucked under his arm. They'd sit together, listening to the gramophone, or Aion would read the paper to him. Then Fiore would come to tell them that dinner was ready, perhaps Master Joshua and Master Aion would like to come to the table?

Shader's solid presence, and Ewan's concern kept him grounded, kept him in the present-now. "Joshua, I'm sorry, this was the worst possible time to tell you," Ewan began, but Joshua shook his head.

"No, what's one more shock?" Joshua asked, trying to smile."How--how long have you known?" _And if you knew, why did you keep it from me, why didn't they come to visit me?_

"I just found out--had it confirmed--today, Joshua," Ewan said.

"Where is she?" Joshua asked.

"We don't know. Sister Kate was warned against trying to find her."

"By who?" Joshua said. At the same time, Shader said. "Pursuers."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, exposition! This part came amazingly fast for me. The exchange between Lillith-Core and Duffau relates to the scene in the manga where Aion realizes that Mary is being taken over by Pandaemonium, and freaks out.
> 
> The Akashic Record is supposed to be a metaphysical/astral database that contains the sum of all human knowledge and experience--there's also supposed to be other Akashic Records for all forms of life, and even for planets, solar systems and the universe.
> 
> The secret research station is in Sedona, in northern Arizona. The mountains near Sedona are said to contain vortices, and the area is popular with the pagan/New Age/mystical communities.


	7. Deluge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rosette arrives at the secret research station, and Duffau explains what's going on. Mostly.

There was no sense of movement between the two gates, only a flash of light, and the cinder block walls of the farm house basement became polished stone. The room was roughly circular, and empty except for herself, Rao, Gil and Sekhet. And Chrono was here. "Chrono!" She stepped off the platform, wanting to go to him, feeling drawn like steel pins to a magnet, but Gil caught her arm. She rounded on him sharply. "Let me go!"

"He's not going anywhere," Rao said. "He's dead to the world."

"Not helpful, Rao," Sekhet muttered, and kicked him.

"I want to see him!" Rosette said. She tried to wrench free, and fell backward in a untidy sprawl when Gil let her go suddenly.

"You will, Miss Christopher," Gil said calmly. "There are things you must know, before we can take you to see the Sinner. Until then you must wait." He bent slightly, holding out his hand. After glaring at it for a moment, she caught it in hers, and let him pull her to her feet.

_I hate waiting!_ Rosette thought venomously. Both demons winced, but she didn't feel particularly sorry for her mental "shout." She took a deep breath, and tried to convince her racing pulse to slow down. "How long do I have to wait?"

"A day, no more," Gil said in what was probably intended to be a reassuring voice. It didn't work, but Rosette nodded anyway.

The research station had been carved out of a mountain, its entrances covered by Legion-infused stone. It seemed like a busy, quiet and orderly place quite out of keeping with anything Rosette had ever imagined a stronghold full of demons to be like. The hallways were well lit by blue-white strips running down the ceiling, and the walls and floor were spotlessly clean. The air smelled dry and a little sharp, and stung her nose a little. The demons in the halls would stop and watch her pass by. Their gazes weren't hostile, but they weren't friendly either. They spoke in the demon language or in English as she passed them. She wasn't sure of what they might have been saying in the demon language, (which had never been her best subject, even with Chrono for a tutor) but the English portion she could hear ranged from the prosaic to the disturbing.

_"...Soil erosion of all things! The whole region will look like Mars or the Moon, within the next few years!"_

_"...The web keeps catching more flies, but where is the spider?"_

_"...That's her, isn't it? The Sinner's Magdalen."_

_"...Go flying with me?"_

_"...So I said 'that's not funny,' and the coyote-spirit says 'oh yes it is,' and meanwhile I'm still hanging from one foot from the pinyon tree..."_

_"...Nokomis went to Canyon de Chelly."_

The room Gil escorted her to was about the size of her bedroom at the farm. He demonstrated how the couch along one wall could be folded out into a bed, and showed her how to work the shower controls in the bathroom. In one corner of the room was a low desk with something like an opaque black hexagonal plaque on a stand. Despite her continuing worry for Chrono, she approached the strange object.

The plaque was perhaps nineteen inches from top to bottom and side to side. On a shelf that moved in and out on rollers, there was something that looked like a flat typewriter. The letters were English, and the numbers Arabic. "It's a computer," Gil said. "You can think of it as a sort of typewriter and calculator, combined," he said. He reached forward and touched the plaque, which brightened from black to a blue-white, which resolved into a picture of a herd of horses running through a desert. Symbols were scattered across the picture. He said something aloud, and a white square appeared, with glyphs in the demonic language that Rosette read as voice recognition activated. "Say something Miss Christopher."

Rosette frowned. "What should I say?" Rosette asked. The "computer" made a soft chiming noise.

Gil looked amused. "That should be enough," he said. "The computer will now only respond to you, or someone with a higher clearance level than you."

**Language preference?** The square asked in the demonic language. The text blinked when she hesitated. **Language preference?**

"Um. English."

**Acknowledged. Language preference: English.**

"Now what?" Rosette asked. She wondered why this device was in her room. "Are you going to take me to see Chrono now?"

"You can see Chrono now, from this room," Gil said.

Rosette frowned. "What? How?"

Gil said something in further, a string of commands that Rosette couldn't decipher. Another square popped into view, half the sized of the plaque. It showed a room lit with what looked like oil lamps, but probably weren't. The walls were the same orange-red of the rest of the complex. There was a stone block, and a naked humanoid form chained to it, arms spread cruciform, with what looked like thick leather straps crossing over his chest and thighs. If it hadn't been for the long purple-blue hair, she would never have recognized him, because the surface of his skin was scaled and peeling, horns projecting from his arms and chest, plates covering his belly. His face had been obscured by a mask. _"What have you done to him?" _She rose quickly, so quickly that Gil took several steps backward, hands raised in a non-threatening pose.

"Rosette, he did that to himself," Gil said sharply. "Rosette, understand that we have no reason to love the Sinner for what he and his brothers have done to Pandaemonium. Despite that, we have been struggling to keep him alive, and he has fought us every step of the way, because he is punishing himself for surviving."

"If you're helping him, why is he chained up like that?"

"It's really hard for a demon to commit suicide," Sekhet said bluntly. "He's shutting the world out, and he's starving his Legion. Right now it's going into metastasis, trying to pull in as much life-death energy as it can on its own. Eventually though, it'll eat him alive, and he'll die, well, his self will--the body will be alive, with no more intelligence than a animal."

_But I'm not dead! I'm alive!_ She wanted to hit something, she wanted to shoot something, wanted to feel the recoil of her handgun, and the smell of gunpowder. She wanted to destroy something, wanted to go down there and kick Chrono's ass until he woke up and yelled at her. She wanted him awake and alive and smiling at her in that way that made her melt inside. _I'M ALIVE DAMN YOU! _Distantly she could hear Gil and Sekhet, could see that they were backed away from her as far as they could get, and not be in the bathroom.

"Rosette, calm down," Gil was saying. "You need to calm down. You can't help him like this."

He was right, but her anger was like a wild thing inside of her, as if something else were taking over, and she was only a watcher in her own body. She took a deep breath, and another. "How can I help him?" She asked. "I've felt that he was alive since I woke up--how can he not know that I'm alive?"

"Because he felt you _die_," Sekhet said. "He felt you slip from his grasp, after he'd sworn to you. I've never been cadre, and not likely to be, but I've seen what it's like."

"Cadre?" Rosette asked blankly.

"High ranking demons have followers. Brothers who are closer to them, and subordinant to them," Gil said. "According to your contract, you were Chrono's Mistress, the price being your soul, which he was devouring minute by hour by day. According to his deepest self, he was part of your cadre--you were his sister, and his Liege."

"I _hope_ he didn't think of me as a sister," Rosette muttered, flushing hotly despite herself. The things they had done together in the six months before their "death" had not been things a brother should do to their sister, or vice versa!

The demons laughed. "All demons come from the same Mother, Rosette," Gil said. "We are all brothers to each other, though we have many different words to define our relationships--all those terms translate as "brother" but have seperate connotations."

"I'm not exactly relieved," Rosette said, and rubbed her face with one hand. Her anger was spent, and the exhaustion from the obstacle course she had run only a brief time ago was finally catching up to her. Now all she wanted to do was get something to eat, and sleep.

"You need to rest, Rosette," Gil said, echoing her thoughts. "We'll get you something to eat, and after you rest, there is a message from Duffau that you must see."

* * *

The latest reports from Madgalen operatives throughout the east coast and most of the midwest weren't good. A sudden burst of demonic activity had occurred, centering in New York City and Long Island. It wasn't only in the cities that demonic activity had risen. The ocean had suddenly become filled with monsters, and strange sharklike corpses were washing up onto the shore. Ships had been attacked, and the survivors had reported seeing fire below the waves prior to their ship being rammed or capsized.

On the advice of her father, Kate had made arrangements with the police and fire departments to have Militia Members assigned to their units as "advisors." There had been some small noise in the newspapers about the seperation of Church and State (and the traditional outcry from "rival" Protestant organizations, which died down when she arranged an "ecumenical conference" with several of the leaders) but the response had been more or less favorable among the civilian populace. She thought the meetings had gone very well, even with the traditional cries of "heretic!" and "popish idol worship," and despite the minor explosion when the Jewish delegates arrived. Lines of communication had at least been opened between the various groups, though they weren't very coordinated as yet.

Kate, reading the most recent report paused. There was something almost familiar about the reports about the ocean attacks. With the report still in hand, she went to the Elder's workshop. The Elder looked up with a smile that rapidly faded when he saw the look on her face. "Does this sound familiar to you, Elder?" She handed the report to old man.

The Elder read it quickly, skimming over the details. "Oh my, yes," he said, and cleared off his work table. Rummaging through shelves and cabinets he came up with a map that he spread over the table's surface. "The first appearance of the Sinners fifty five years ago, was heralded by similar disturbances and attacks." Grabbing a grease pencil he drew a circle, that if it was to scale would have covered a radius of five miles. "Something was seen rising from right about there, two hundred miles off the coast of New Jersey."

"Submarines tend to disappear in that region, don't they?" Kate asked.

The Elder nodded. "Anything below a hundred feet is a no man's land," he said. "Whatever is down there, the demons definitely don't want us to have a closer look."

"Pandaemonium," Kate said thoughtfully. "Could that be what they're protecting?" Explorers had tried to find the demon-world for centuries. The human imagination created hollow worlds-within-worlds and floating islands, and mirror-worlds beneath the sea, but the actual demon-world, had never been found during the Age of Exploration. The idea that the demon-world might be so close to home felt strange, as if the world had become simultaneously become smaller and bigger at the same time.

It's certainly possible," the Elder said. "I had a similar thought, years ago, but couldn't get Chrono to confirm it." Kate tried not to smile at the Elder's disgruntled tone of voice. "It took me a week to figure out that most of what he did tell me came from _At the Earth's Core_, and _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ !"

* * *

"Hello Rosette Christopher," The image on the screen said. Duffau sat on the edge of the bed in what looked like a hotel room, leaning forward slightly, with his forearms resting on his thighs. He wore a gray suit, and his hat dangled from one hand. "This recording was made two weeks after your funeral. By now you must know or have guessed your situation, and that of the Sinner Chrono."

_Not really_, Rosette thought sarcastically. _Why don't you tell me about it?_

Duffau smiled, as if he could hear her. "I can imagine your impatience," Duffau said. "I will try to be as clear and brief as possible. First, after your defeat of Aion, the Core sustained major damage, and it became necessary to seek a new interface for the Core." Duffau paused a moment before continuing. "You were chosen as the most likely candidate, in fact, you would have been an ideal interface, without your soul--however, I was unable to locate either you or the Sinner."

_Interface?_ Rosette sure what that meant, but somehow, the word filled her with dread.

"When we finally found you, we discovered that you had been infused with Legion. Specifically, the strain of Legion the Elders had tried to eradicate." Another pause. "The Legion you possess disqualifies you as a candidate."

"The second thing you must know is that you and Chrono may be the keys to a mystery that has plagued me for more than fifty years. Fifty-five years ago, Aion, Chrono's twin brother ascended to a restricted domain, actually touching the Primordial Core during his coming-of-age ceremony."

_Aion is Chrono's twin brother? They're really brothers? _She had never thought of it before, they were so different in demeanor and yet, they weren't different at all, not in appearance. Strip away Aion's glasses, darken his hair, and he would look like Chrono, except for the inverted triangle of eye spots on his forehead. How had she missed that? She shivered, and tried to focus on the message from Duffau, not wanting to think to closely about Aion, and what he had done to her, to Joshua and Chrono.

"Aion's ascension to the Forbidden Zone resulted in a massive culling that was only partially successful. Aion had gathered the survivors of the culling and led a revolt that resulted in the death of our Queen," Duffau said. "I have come to believe that the Primordial Core has been restricted because it contains information that the elders did not want the People to know. I believe this information may aid in the survival of my people, and this world. The only one who might possibly be able to reach the level Aion did is your Sinner, Rosette Christopher." Duffau smiled, a tight, grim expression. "The third thing you must understand is that if you and your Sinner do not help us, or fail, Pandaemonium's dissolution will result in a catastrophe that will make your Biblical Deluge seem like a mild spring rain."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _At the Earth's Core_ is by Edgar Rice Borroughs, if you don't know that _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ is by Jules Verne, there is no hope for you.


	8. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Joshua rescues Shader from Ewan, and Rosette rescues Chrono from himself.

_No one who makes a Contract really wants to live, Joshua. They want something only life can pay for._

"Rosette wanted to _live,"_ Joshua mumbled angrily in response, still half-asleep. "More than anything, she wanted to live." Joshua shivered, and woke the rest of the way up. The tag ends of the argument he'd been having in his dream still lingered. Aion, talking about Contracts, and sorcerers. _Memory, or a dream?_ He thought he could remember other conversations, if he pressed at that foggy place in his head--but the details eluded him.

_A Contractor may be a sorcerer, but a sorcerer is not always a Contractor._

He could smell breakfast cooking, and his stomach growled in response. Eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, coffee--Joshua rolled out of bed, and padded barefoot out of his room, following the wonderful smells into the kitchen. _Ewan is almost as good a cook as Fiore,_ he thought absently, and for once, remembering his "sister" didn't hurt. He could hear Ewan and Shader talking, and he paused in the hallway to listen. It wasn't a friendly conversation.

"What you're asking is outside my skill-set, Mr. Remington. I can put bodies and machines together, I can build and engineer and repair anything, but Aion and Fiore were the only ones who understood the sorcery application they were using."

"Fiore, that would be Florette, Satella's sister," Ewan said.

"They both mean 'flower'," Shader said in an unsteady voice. "And she asked to be called Fiore, because she wasn't 'Florette' anymore."

Ewan said something low, and angry, and Joshua knew that he should probably intervene. Shader had been through a lot lately, and while she wasn't a combatant, she could be dangerous if pushed. _And Ewan is pushing._ He stepped into the kitchen. "Morning," he said cheerfully, as if he hadn't overheard them talking.

Shader smiled at him, as if to say _thanks for the save_, and Ewan turned from the frying pan. "Good morning, Joshua, breakfast will be ready in a few minutes."

"I'll set the table," Joshua offered, and went to the cabinet for the plates. "Shader really doesn't know anything about the application Aion was using," Joshua said after a few beats. "It's mostly human sorcery reverse-engineered to be compatible with demon alchemy." He grinned at Ewan's suddenly intent and assessing look. "I only know from what I remember Aion telling me."

"How much do you know?" Ewan said, still with that assessing look.

"Not a lot," Joshua admitted, and glanced over at Shader, before starting to set the table. "Maybe not even enough to be useful. What you really need, is Fiore." Shader made a little noise of protest at that, mouthing the word _no_. "If Shader had the equipment, she could reactivate her."

"Reactivate," Ewan said tonelessly.

"She really _was_ a doll," Joshua said. "Like _Rossum's Universal Robots_. Her bones were reinforced ceramic, her flesh had been infused with Legion supplied with astral energy stored in the collar and cuffs she wore. The only fully human part of her was her brain, and maybe twenty percent of her nervous system." Joshua finished setting the table, and sat down. "Shader could fix Fiore, but asking her to would be unbelievably cruel to both Shader _and_ Fiore, so you're stuck with whatever I can remember, or whatever grimoires Aion might have hidden."

"There's no way I'd do it, anyway," Shader said. "I didn't want to bring her back the _first_ time." She wiped her eyes furiously, and grabbed the plate of biscuits and the butter dish, setting them on the table. Ewan carried the sausages and gravy, and went back for the eggs and the coffee.

"I wouldn't ask you to," Ewan said as he served himself. "I realized my line of questioning might unsettle you, but there were things I needed to know." He glanced over and Joshua, who felt his face heat. "I believe I may have learned more than I intended."

The breakfast conversation drifted into safer subjects, much to Joshua's relief. Ewan told them about work being done to try to help cure the "Crusaders" of their madness, and the efforts the New York branch of the Madgalen Order to integrate more completely with other groups and city and state law enforcement. Ewan didn't have anything to offer about Rosette's possible whereabouts, but he promised to find out as soon as possible.

After breakfast, Ewan left, presumably to visit the Order, or to go on errands. It seemed a little odd to Joshua, that someone who had left the Order still seemed so much a part of it. Ewan made at least two trips a week up to the Order chapter house. At the same time--it made a certain kind of sense. Joshua wasn't any use to the Order, but it would be wrong not to do something for him. Ewan took care of him out of a sense of obligation to Rosette's memory, and reported informally to the Order about Joshua's recovery, or lack thereof. _I'm a charity case no matter what, aren't I?_ Joshua thought, amused despite himself. Hadn't Aion used his dislike of being weak, of needing help against him?

Shader decided to put him through a series of cognitive-memory tests that she had invented, and then let him write and draw while she took notes on the results of her tests. Around noon, she sat down catty-corner to where he sat at the kitchen table, chin resting on her hands as she watched him draw. "You reminded me of Aion, this morning," she said after several minutes.

"I'm sorry," Joshua said, setting his pencil down, and facing her.

Shader pinked. "Not in a bad way," she said quickly. "Just the way you told him about Fiore." She sat up, and hugged him, arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, and kissed the top of his head. "You offered him a choice that wasn't really a choice."

"I know," Joshua said. "It bothers me, that there's so much of Aion in me." _I hate that I miss him, and I hate what he did to me, what he did to others._

She squeezed him again, just a little too tight, and laughed. "Not Aion," she said. "You're Chrono. Almost literally."

"What do you mean?" Joshua asked, confused. Shader laughed, and let him go, sitting back down on her chair.

"A few different thoughts came together," Shader said. "The first is, you're one of the very few people Aion ever really cared about. Aion was always quiet, but after--well, after, it was like there was a wall, and he couldn't really see past it, and no one could reach him, except Chrono. Then after a while, not even Chrono could. I think in some ways, you reminded Aion of Chrono."

"Well, I did have his horns," Joshua said mildly. Shader snorted at him.

"Very funny," Shader said. "You reminded Aion of Chrono when he was your age. He--Aion was always protective of Chrono. Chrono was quiet, a day dreamer, and asked lots of questions. So did Aion, but Chrono's questions were why things were, and Aion's were about how things worked."

Joshua thought about that for a moment. "It's really hard for me to imagine Aion as a child," Joshua said.

Shader grinned. "He was cute. They both were."

"What did you mean by 'almost literally'?" Joshua asked, brushing away thoughts of a pint-sized Aion shooting marbles, or playing kick-the-can. The mental image of the Sinners as a kind of demonic _Our Gang_ was sort of frightening.

"Chrono's horns," Shader said. She reached out and brushed her fingers through his hair, just over where the horns had once been. Joshua's scalp tingled at the touch. "One set per customer, each designed to amplify what a demon senses normally, to channel astral energies, and most importantly, so Pandaemonium can control us through our Legion. You of course, never had Legion, so She couldn't control you--You however could hear Her, which was to our advantage."

He wasn't quite sure of what to say, or what to ask. For a moment, he couldn't even see, or hear, his head filled with a memory of static filling his head, cut through by grief-rage-pain as his, as Chrono's horns were ripped away. Chrono's grief, and his desperation, his despair. _I could hear him crying, in my head._ "He took them back," Joshua said. "He took the horns from me."

"The roots are still there," Shader said. "They're a part of your nervous system now, and it would do more harm than good to try to remove them. I don't think we'll have a problem with seizures--those were caused by your body not being able to fully absorb or channel the excess astral energy. Since they aren't getting any astral, they're more or less dormant."

_More or less dormant?_ He remembered the odd words and phrases that seemed to pop up when he wrote. Spirit-writing. "I haven't been hearing the noise," Joshua said. "I haven't heard anything at all."

"You aren't a natural telepath," Shader said. "If you were, you'd periodically hear the noise, the way you did when you had the horns. What's happening--what I think is happening here is that you're recieving but you're mind can't decode the signals on a conscious level."

Joshua frowned. "I guess that makes sense, but what I was hearing before, that was random thoughts from every one within a certain radius. This--this isn't like that."

"You both have the neural net of the same pair of horns, and Chrono is a natural telepath. I think--I can't be sure, since I can't run the tests I'd need to--that you're picking up an echo from Chrono."

* * *

The only sound in the temple was the sound of water dripping. The flames dancing in their copper lamps seemed to be some kind of illusion. The actual light sources seemed to come from behind the lamps, a soft golden glow that didn't flicker the way the illusory flames did. The walls and the floor had some kind of pattern worked into them that hadn't been visible in the odd moving picture she had seen back in her room.

Chrono looked worse up close than he had in the picture. Chrono's flesh crawled-- moving and shifting, his skin bubbling like oatmeal as she watched. Revolting as it appeared, she had an urge shake him awake, do something to get his attention. She took a breath, and closed her eyes. "Get the chains off of him, and that mask thing, whatever it is. Get out, and lock me in."

"Rosette," Gil said in a cautioning voice. "It's not safe."

"Unchain him, and get out," Rosette said. "Please." Her voice shook.

"Allright," Gil said. When Gil, Rao and Sekhet had left, and the doors of the temple had been shut and sealed, she slowly approached the stone altar, setting down the case. His eyes were open, but they were blank, and unblinking. The trio of eye spots centered on his forehead were a red so dark they looked black. Maybe that was what the mask had been for? His lips were skinned back from his teeth in a twisted grimace. "What I have here, are a set of prototype astral collectors." At least they'd better be. She'd be really mad if they turned out to be some kind of booby trap bombs. It felt strange talking to him like this, when he couldn't, or wouldn't hear her. "I know you're rejecting astral, but I'm going to put them on you anyway. Then I'm going to kick your ass." No response from Chrono, she couldn't even tell if he was still breathing or not.

She knelt on the floor, and opened the case. The prototypes were thick steel caps with hair fine needles on one side, that made Rosette feel slightly queasy looking at them. There were also scissors, cloth, a bottle of some kind of adhesive, and a tube of something that was meant to remove hair. "Why do I have to be the one who does this again?" She asked.

"You're less likely to cause him to lash out," Gil said. "And frankly, no one here wants to be the one who says 'I restored the power of the Slayer of a Hundred Thousand.'"

"Not something you'd want to bring up at a cocktail party?"

"No."

Rosette sighed, and carefully began to snip away at the tangled mess surrounding Chrono's capped horn stumps. Once an inch and a half had been shorn around each cap, she carefully spread the hair remover, waited a few minutes, and wiped the clear gunk off, along with the clumps of dissolved hair. She painted the first cap with the adhesive, then picked up one of the disks. Swallowing, she placed the disk over the cap, took a deep breath, and pushed it straight in. Chrono's whole body shuddered, as if electricity had been run through his body--Rosette bit her tongue to keep from screaming. The disk heated up under her hand, and there was a sharp, watery smell in the air. She crossed herself, then quickly rubbed away the tears that stung her eyes before repeating the procedure with the other disk. Chrono's body shuddered for a second time, then went still, except for the horriyfying "boiling oatmeal" appearance of his skin.

"Oh, Chrono," she whispered. She touched the side of his face. A pins and needles sensation ran up her arm, and she snatched her hand back with a gasp.

"Rosette?" Gil asked, sounding concerned. "Oh--that's interesting," he said. "His Legion is responding to you."

"Is that supposed to happen?" Rosette said.

"It doesn't seem to be harming him," Gil said. "In fact given the readings I'm getting, it might be a good sign. Touch him again."

She nodded, and reached out, a trifle more cautiously this time. When her fingers brushed Chrono's cheek, the pins-and-needles sensation returned, and his skin went smooth beneath her hand. "Chrono?" He gave no sign that he heard her, but somehow she knew he could hear her. "C'mon Chrono, wake up," she said softly. She turned his face toward her, and aligned herself so that she lay on her side next to him. The pins and needles sensation ran up her arm to her shoulder, and as she watched, the boiling oatmeal affect slowly faded. She shivered at the sensation, but didn't take her hand away, instead, she forced her now numb and unresponsive hand to slide from his cheek to his neck and shoulder. "My arm is going to sleep--going numb," she said.

"There's some kind of exchange going on," Gil said, sounding entirely too interested for Rosette's peace of mind. "Do you feel tired, dizzy?"

"A little--what's happening?" Rosette said. She noted with a sort of dazed interest that her body had unconsciously moved closer to Chrono, and the boiling had completely vanished.

"I'm not sure," the demon admitted. "This is entirely new territory. Chrono's metastasis is going into remission, and your Legion is transferring energy to his Legion, and then going dormant. That's cause of the numbness."

"Oh," she said. She felt warm and sleepy, her vision blurring and the room spinning. "That makes sense," she murmured, and sank down beside Chrono, resting her head on his shoulder. Sleep came like a wave, dragging her under.

Soul-dive.

It felt as if she were diving into someone's soul, something she had only done once before, for Azmaria. Fear thrilled through her astral body as she descended. Soul-dives without the proper equipment were contraindicated because unless you had the natural talent for it or the strength of an Apostle, it was too damned dangerous.

She slowed her descent, drifting past huge pentagonal mirrors linked by what looked like silver ribbons or wires. In the mirrors she saw pictures, places, people. Places and people she knew, many of them. She recognized the tiny house she had Chrono had lived in, she saw the Order's House in New York, and Seventh Bell. She saw Joshua and Aion, Father Remington, and Sister Kate. Herself. _Memories, these are Chrono's memories._

_Rosette?_

For a moment she saw him, his face reflected in a dozen mirrors, vanishing when she cried his name. Her hand brushed the surface of one of the mirrors, and there was a flash of light.

She found herself standing on a low hill, feet sunk in soft green grass starred with flowers. The "sky" was a roof of mother of pearl, several thousand feet up. The "sun" was a blue-white hemisphere at the apex of the roof. The air was hot and wet, and smelled of warm earth and flowers. Rosette could see trees, grass and little winding streams that fed ponds and canals for terraced gardens. At the tops of low mesas were buildings. It looked like something out of one of Joshua's science fiction novels. "Wow," she said, turning, wanting take it all in at once. "Where are we?"

"Pandaemonium," Chrono said. He knelt in the grass next to her, somewhere between his child form and his adult. Chains had been wrapped around his wrists and arms, binding him to the ground.

"It's beautiful," Rosette said.

"It's dying," Chrono replied. "It's dying, and Aion wanted to finish the job." He looked up at her, half in longing, half in terror.

She dropped down in front of him, sitting back on her heels. "Suicide's a sin, you know that, right?"

Chrono laughed, a choked sound that was half a sob. "What's one more?" He said. "I'm a murderer, Rosette, a monster. I ate you alive--how can I atone except with my death?"

"If I'm still here, what do you have to atone for?" Rosette demanded.

"Being a monster. I've killed children Rosette. _Infants._ All I can do is destroy. I've never saved a single life, I've never been able to save anyone I ever loved. How can you care about me? Why do you care about me?"

"Because we made a promise. Because we had a Contract," Rosette said softly. "Because we saved Azmaria, because we found Joshua and stopped Aion. Because Aion broke me, and I nearly broke you. Because we fixed what we could, and left what we couldn't. Because six months of heaven could never be enough. Because the terms of the Contract were fulfilled, and I am never letting you go. Because my soul belonged to you, and you belong to me."

"I belong to you?" Chrono asked, voice rough with emotion. "Do I?" As if it were something he could never hope for.

"Yes, you nimrod!" Rosette shouted, and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Didn't I just get through telling you that?" She kissed him, bowling him over, the chains snapping like paper as Chrono fell back. Chrono shuddered beneath her, laughing with a relief that edged on sobs. She kissed him again. "Wake up, okay? I need you." She pulled away, reluctantly.

"Do you have to leave?" Chrono said, sounding younger than she had ever heard him sound.

"I'm right beside you," she said.

When she awoke again, Chrono still slept. His eyes opened when she stirred, and he smiled. "Do you think they'll give us a real bed?" He asked in a hoarse voice. "My back is killing me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> R.U.R, (Rossum's Universal Robots) is a science fiction play by Karel Capek. _Our Gang_ is a U.S. serial featuring cute, mischievous children dating from the 1920s to the 1940s. (According to Wiki.)


	9. Apostate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Duffau tries to explain himself, and Rosette and Chrono have a little quality time together.

In the Chamber of the Core, Duffau stood in silent contemplation of the mother of both Aion and Chrono, hoping Lillith would open her eyes and offer him advice, no matter how oblique. The human woman's naked torso was slumped forward in an attitude of exhaustion, hair hanging in her eyes, though she seemed to be asleep. The huge fleshy vat her torso rose from burbled quietly, its translucent sides revealing coils of intestine, her womb, and other organs being maintained by the gel within the vat. Wings rose from her shoulders, and horns crowned her head. Duffau thought her beautiful; he thought a human would probably find her horrifying, a monster, a lamia, a sphynx.

Duffau could clearly see both brothers in the face of their mother--but had Lillith shared their temperament? Had she been stubborn like Aion, or contemplative like Chrono? To whom did the twins owe those traits that had placed them within the soldier caste?

Humans had no control over the combination and permutations of their legacies, so Aion and Chrono were completely and utterly random. Yet the combinations that had occurred within the twins had seemed favorable, pointing toward strength, potential high intelligence, and power. The Queen's technicians had been so enamored of the mutations that had occurred within the twins and their Legion that they'd incorporated the new strain and the genes into the following generations.

"My Lord." A member of his cadre announced his presence, entering the chamber to stand at Duffau's side. At Duffau's nod, the soldier made his report. "Rosette Christopher has successfully implanted the prototype astral collectors, and awakened the Ignoble One. They have been removed from the vigil chamber, and are being debriefed by the physician and technicians you assigned to the Magdalen."

"Thank you, Ardath," Duffau said. "They are to be brought here as soon as possible."

"Yes My Lord," the demon replied. A pause. "My Lord, what are we to do about the Sinner Shader?"

Duffau thought about it. Given his own current state of technical rebellion, it would be incredibly hypocritical to continue the Pursuit against Shader. On the other hand, both Shader and Rosette's brother had been Aion's vassals. "Let the Madgalen Order deal with Joshua Christopher and the Sinner," he said finally.

"Yes My Lord," Ardath said, and bowed before exiting the chamber.

After several more minutes of hoping Lillith might speak, Duffau left the chamber, descending to the block of cells where the surviving Regent and elders were being kept. This wasn't an interview he wanted to have, but he didn't have any choice.

"Why have you done this, Duffau?" Louhi demanded angrily, rising to his feet when he became aware of Duffau's approach. He stood at the very edge of the barrier, almost touching the edge of the circle that had been painted inside the cell. "How could you betray Pandaemonium, you were the best of us!"

"Brother, ask how I was able to," Duffau said.

"You are no Brother of mine, Apostate!" Louhi shouted.

"Brother still," Duffau said. "Weren't we both trained by Othinn One-Eye? I was proud when you were chosen as a Regent, and if you had asked when we were students, I would have joined your cadre." Duffau let his very real distress creep into his tone and emotional aura, wanting Louhi to sense--and hopefully be swayed by--his sincerity.

"As well you hadn't," Louhi growled, looking away from Duffau.

"Perhaps, perhaps not," Duffau said. "My Lord, I haven't betrayed Pandaemonium, I do this for Pandaemonium, with Her approval and support." What he said was at least three quarters true.

"Explain yourself, Duffau."

"My Lord, since the rebellion, I have Pursued the Sinners, but I have also Pursued answers to questions I could not ask you," Duffau said. "Why are we restricted to this dying world? What is the nature of this world? Why is She dying? Why is touching the Primordial Core forbidden? Why has no new Queen been chosen?"

"I was right in naming you Apostate, it seems," Louhi said. "I cannot believe that Pandaemonium would support such heresy, Duffau. This world is our _home_ Duffau, without it we would have nothing. The fact that Sinners were led into and rebellion should be explanation enough why the Core is forbidden, and no Queen has been chosen, because no children have been born," Louhi drove on relentlessly. "And no children have been born because those same Sinners destroyed the Creche."

"My Lord, your arguments are unskillful," Duffau said. "Othinn would have your hide for such reasoning. If heresy is unsupportable, how could the Sinners have acquired it from Her? And if we have no Queen, we still have her technicians, those whose duty was to combine the legacies and shape the next generation. Females could have been chosen, or allowed to volunteer to be implanted with the blastocysts, if the creche-wombs could not be repaired." He tried not to smile at the horrified look Louhi gave him. "There were clear solutions to all of these problems--yet these steps were never taken."

"We could do nothing without the Queen," Louhi said. "D'you think we didn't try, at first? Only the Queen has the authority to approve or create a generation." He looked at Duffau, bleak and somber. "There are none among the sisters who can rise to the Queen's level, the ones who came closest died during the transfer process--they simply weren't strong enough."

_Or perhaps,_ a voice whispered in the back of Duffau's head. _Perhaps She deliberately weakened Her daughters so that none could take Her place._

* * *

_"Your will is very strong, Sinner. And so is Miss Christopher's. She did not want to die, and you did not want to live without her."_

_"I did this to her?"_

_"According to Gil we did this to each other. Sister Kate always did say I was stubborn."_

_"The Duke believes that information essential to the survival of our people is being kept from us. You, Sinner, are the only one who might possibly be able to ascend to the Primordial Core."_

_"Because Aion did. But you don't know."_

_"We don't know. But you're the best chance we have, in the time allowed."_

_"How much time?"_

_"At this point? Perhaps only days."_

Awake, again. Alive. Chrono awoke, the conversation from the night before still echoing in his thoughts. Fear slid through him, settling cold and thick in his gut. Could he really do what they thought he could? What if what happened to Aion, happened to him?

Disturbed and uneasy, he curled more closely to Rosette, letting himself be distracted by her closeness, the steady beat of her heart. Her body against his naked skin. He had one leg hooked over her thighs, one hand cupping her breasts, and his forehead pressed against the nape of her neck. Her rear pressed up against his cock in a way that made his entire body heat up. He moaned softly, and his hand on her breast tightened, causing her to squirm against him. He moaned again, nuzzling her soft skin, and inhaling her warm scent. "Rosette?" He whispered, and kissed the back of her neck, soft open mouthed kisses that made her squirm some more. "Wakey wakey?" He asked in an approximation of his childish tenor.

"Noooo. Lemme sleep a little longer," Rosette complained. She wriggled and twisted around in his arms, kissing him with sleepy abandon, eyes still closed. She missed his mouth the first time, catching his cheek instead. "Mmph. Hold still so I can kiss you," she mumbled, peering at him sleepily.

"Is it my fault your aim is rusty?" Chrono asked teasingly.

Rosette appeared to think about this. "Yes. Everything is your fault." She kissed him again, then reluctantly pushed off and away from the couch-bed. "The extinction of the dinosaurs, the Civil War, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand..." She said as she headed into the bathroom.

"We didn't escape Pandaemonium 'til after the Civil War Rosette, and I was asleep during the great war," Chrono protested with a smile. His smile faded as he was reminded of the conversation that had taken place the night before. _You, Sinner, are the only one who might possibly be able to ascend to the Primordial Core._

When he had been growing up, Chrono's teachers had all praised the Duke as an Exemplar of the soldier caste. It seemed incredible that Duffau had been plotting a quiet rebellion while hunting down the Sinners, yet he had been responsible for the creation of this forbidden outpost. He had protected Rosette, for which Chrono was grateful, but what Duffau wanted in exchange...

Unconsciously, he touched the caps covering his horn-stumps. They were warm to the touch, and made his head feel about three times as heavy, though he'd been told that he'd get used to the extra weight. The devices had been made without Legion, and connected directly to the nerve-net that was all that remained of his horns. His power levels were rising, though almost all of the energy was being sucked in by his starving Legion.

"Chrono, come take a shower with me?" Rosette asked, poking her head out of the bathroom. He stood on uncertain feet that still felt half-asleep and stepped into the bathroom. He stumbled, but Rosette caught him easily, and nudged him over to the shower, sitting him down on the shelf inside the stall, before shutting the stall door. "Your hair looks like a rat's nest."

"At least I have hair," Chrono shot back when Rosette turned to fiddle with the shower controls. A massage pulse of almost-too-hot water began to beat down on the both of them from three directions.

"Grrr. That's your fault too," Rosette said. "I was bald when I woke up." She ran her fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp. "And naked."

"Legion eats everything it comes in contact with," Chrono murmured, relaxing under her touch, and the heat of the water. "That it isn't a part of to begin with."

"How come it hadn't eaten your clothes off, when we first found you?" Rosette asked curiously.

"The same reason my clothes change when I change," Chrono said with a grin. "I infused it with my Legion."

"You're going to have to show me that trick, buster," Rosette said, and tweaked his nose.

"Okay," he said agreeably.

* * *

A second letter with no return address appeared with the morning mail. The letter had been written in a strong masculine hand, the sentences as straight as if they'd been written on lined paper.

_Dear Sister Kate,_

_I send you this personal warning in the name of our alliance, and because you are the Preceptor of Rosette Christopher:_

_Perhaps three days from now there may be an explosion off the coast of New Jersey. It will occur in approximately the same place the orbital the Sinners escaped in was seen rising from fifty five years ago. The cause of this explosion will be the death of the Core-Brain, which holds Pandaemonium together. When the Core-Brain dies, the Legion being held together by Her will enter metastasis, and begin to multiply out of control._

_This explosion will cause a seismic disturbance and a tidal wave, followed by a wave of Legion. From landing points along the coast, the Legion will spread at a rapid pace, consuming and incorporating eveything in its path until it has eventually devoured or absorbed everything. Cross barriers should prove effective for a time, but they will fail when the Legion increases to the point that it overbalances the life-death cycle that humans call the Astral Lines._

_We are attempting to solve the problem, but we have little hope of success. Make what preparations you can._

_With Respect, Duke Duffau, General Paramount of the Armies of Pandaemonium._

Numb with horror, Kate sat staring at the letter for some time before she was able to begin composing a list of things she would need to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Franz Ferdinand: Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, his assassination was what set off the first world war.
> 
> "Legacy" in the context used is a coy euphemism for genetic samples and/or sperm and ovum donations. Most of this part is based off of meta speculation inspired by the manga. I've noticed that some fics that deal with the manga-canon, Pandaemonium sometimes lobotomizes female demons and uses them as breeders--I decided to take a slightly different tack since the demon tech is so much higher than human tech, and had them use artificial uteruses, which simultaneously makes demons being the children of Pandaemonium extremely literal, and also explains why Chrono is called Ignoble One (because as the son of Lillith, he's a bastard stepson of Pandaemonium).


	10. Gauntlet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which preparations are made, and Shader has a guilty conscience.

Rosette looked from the green and ivory habit to Chrono and back again. "They can't be serious," she said. She had noticed the clothing on the bed when they'd finally gotten out of the shower. (Thinking about what they'd been doing while the clothes had been brought into the room made her blush.) Except for the color, the habit was an exact duplicate of the Madgalen Order uniform. Clothes had also been laid out for Chrono, a sort of sleeveless black tunic, and a pair of calf-length trousers the same color. Shoes and socks hadn't been included in Chrono's ensemble.

"I think they are," Chrono said, and picked up the tunic. A black hair ribbon fluttered free of the folds.

"I am sick of demons dressing me up in costumes like some kind of doll," Rosette said. _At least its not a stupid black gown with a huge frigging black bow._ She still regretted not burning the damned thing when she'd had the chance.

"The clothes they left for me are almost the same as what I wore for my Coming-of-Age ceremony," Chrono said in an expressionless voice. He started to dress.

"What's a Coming-of-Age ceremony like?" Rosette asked, then just as quickly said, "I know something bad happened at yours, but I'd still like to know." There was so much she didn't know about Chrono, except from what he'd told her, and what she'd been told by Gil. Some of what she'd learned frightened her, some of it made her angry--for Chrono's sake. _I think I stopped asking questions, because it always seemed to hurt him._ She started dressing, pulling on the bloomers and leggings.

Chrono smiled at her. "I don't mind telling you. What's going to happen--I think Duffau wants to have it be as close to an actual tuning ceremony as possible. You fast a day before the actual ceremony, and meditate," he said. "They call you into the Queen's Chamber one by one, and they submerge you in a pool."

"Like a tent revival baptism?" Rosette asked curiously.

Chrono gave her a quick, _I can't believe you said that,_ look. "The pool is full of Legion that draws you into Pandaemonium's--" he trailed off. "Mind isn't the right word. System comes closest." He indicated the computer in the corner of the room. "Demons are connected to Pandaemonium the way that computer is connected to other computers in this place. During the tuning you become a part of that system, and the higher the clearance you achieve, the higher your rank."

"And Aion went too high?" Rosette asked.

"They said he resonated with the Primordial Core," Chrono said. "That region is--sacred. Forbidden." He fell silent.

"Could you help me with the corselet?" Rosette asked, wanting to distract him from his thoughts. She had a feeling he was thinking about Aion. _They were brothers. Were they like me and Joshua? _Had they played together, protected each other? She couldn't imagine Aion as anything but an enemy, an enemy who had stolen her brother, and hurt Chrono. She put the corselet on, and turned her back to Chrono so that he could fasten it. Once he had fastened the corselet, he went on to help her into the habit and the wimple. _Just like when we were at the farm house,_ Rosette thought, remembering how they had helped each other to dress.

"Like a knight being helped into her armor by her squire," Chrono murmured, and pulled her against his chest.

She tilted her head back. "A knight, huh?"

"I think so," Chrono said in a teasing tone.

"You're my knight," Rosette said, and twisted around to give him a kiss on the mouth. He returned it, arms sliding around her waist, pulling her closer.

Once they were dressed, and Rosette had combed and braided Chrono's hair, Gil, Sekhet and Rao came for them. All three were dressed in robes of dark green, and Gil held a long, broad bladed spear with a double cross bar a third of the way down the shaft. "Miss Christopher," Gil said in greeting. He didn't even look at Chrono. "Before we go to the gate-room, there's something I want to give you." He turned the spear sideways and held it out to her. "Please take it," he said when she hesitated. "There is no gaurantee that you'll need it--"

"If you don't, I'll be surprised," Sekhet interjected. It looked as if he were about to say more, but he subsided at a glare from Gil.

"There's no guarantee you'll need it, but it's best to be prepared," Gil said.

Rosette took the spear, and felt-sensed the presence of Legion. "I'd rather have my guns," she said in half-hearted complaint. She missed her guns, she missed having a little _distance_ between herself and her opponent.

"I realize that, Miss Christopher," Gil said. "You'll have to do without, however."

"What about Chrono?"

"The Sinner will be unarmed," Gil said.

She wanted to protest, but Chrono caught her eye, and gave a slight shake of his head. "I can't go armed, Rosette," he said quietly. "Being armed would just cause the situation to escalate out of control." He looked over at Gil. "Duffau can't stop a gauntlet from forming, can he?" It wasn't quite a question, though it had been phrased as one. "So he isn't going to try."

"That is correct, Sinner," Gil replied. "You will both be escorted to the Queen's Chamber by members of Duffau's cadre. It's unlikely that anyone will break through to you, but if you are challenged directly, or attacked you have the right to respond." He glanced--briefly--at Chrono. "The Sinner's defensive options are limited. He can only block or deflect attacks. You must protect him." Gil's tone was deadly serious.

Rosette shivered, and gripped the spear more tightly. Going into the lion's den, she thought. "I understand," she said.

"Do you?" Gil asked quietly. She simply stared at him, until he looked away. "I see that you do."

* * *

Shader held onto his hand so tightly it hurt. "I don't want to be in a seperate room. Don't let them put me in a seperate room!" She whispered frantically.

"I think you overestimate how much control I have over this situation," Joshua whispered back. They were waiting in the Order's entry hall, sitting on a bench, waiting for Ewan to finish talking to Sister Kate. It had only been ten minutes, but Shader had been on edge since the phone call early that morning, and their subsequent arrival at the New York branch of the Madgalen Order.

"You must have some," Shader retorted. "Haven't they been taking care of you?"

"That's Catholic guilt, not a sign of authority, Shader," Joshua said, amused despite his own case of nerves. A few of the younger sisters were hovering curiously, but hadn't approached them yet. He didn't need Shader's sensitive hearing to know that he and Shader were probably their foremost topic of conversation at the moment. "Everything is going to be fine."

The first sisters to approach them were Rosette's friends, Mary, Claire, and Anne. "Hello Joshua," Anne said in a too-loud voice that had at first made Joshua think she was hard of hearing. Then he'd realized that she thought shouting made her easier for him to understand.

_Not deaf, just brain damaged, Anna,_ Joshua thought with good humor. "Hello, Anne. Mary, Claire."

"We've missed you," Claire offered with a smile and a brief glance toward Shader, who was trying to make her self as small and unobtrusive as possible, with limited success. "We're glad you could visit us, despite the circumstances."

"He has caps over his horns like Chrono did," Mary said suddenly. She was tilting at an angle, trying to get a better look at the low-set horn caps, which the hat Shader was wearing couldn't conceal.

"You didn't make a Contract with him, did you?" Anne said, giving poor Shader a suspicious glare.

"_She_ doesn't need a Contract with me," Joshua said with careful emphasis. He even more carefully didn't say why. "She chose a child shape to conserve energy."

"_She's_ dressed like a boy because it's easier for a little boy to get around than a little girl," Shader said, heading off what would have been the next most likely question at the pass.

"This is Shader," Joshua said by way of introduction. "Shader, this is Mary, Claire, and Anne."

"Rosette's friends," Shader said, tilting her cap with her free hand. "Joshua's told me a lot about you."

They were saved from small-talk hell by the appearance of Ewan. "Joshua, Shader," Ewan said with the slightest hesitation before Shader name. "Sister Kate would like to speak to both of you now." Joshua tried to keep the worry from his face, but Ewan saw through him. "It's nothing to worry about," he said reassuringly. At the same time, he glanced at the three nuns, who took the hint and excused themselves.

Ewan escorted Joshua and Shader to Sister Kate's office, and saw them through the door. He didn't go in with them, however. Joshua wondered if that was another sign of the sister's continuing campaign to get Ewan to rejoin the Order. "Shader, hat," Joshua mumured as they entered the room. If they were going to be staying here, they both needed to put their best foot forward. Hopefully the sister would be charmed by the courtesy enough that she wouldn't notice or care that Shader was wearing boy clothes. Shader fumbled the cap off, and held it to her chest, her ears flicking in uneasy semaphore, and nodded politely to Sister Kate, who was standing near her desk.

Sister Kate smiled at them both. "I know you both missed breakfast," Sister Kate said, and nodded over to the coffee table wher a brunch had been laid out. "Please, help yourself."

Joshua's thank you was echoed by Shader's more apprehensive, "thank you ma'am."

"One cup, no sugar," Joshua said when the demon made a beeline for the coffee pot.

"You are so _mean!_ " Shader said indignantly, forgetting for a moment her apprehension. At the same time, she didn't add any sugar to the cup she poured.

"Shader gets pixilated on coffee and sugar," Joshua explained at Kates inquiring look. He sat down beside Shader. "You have to limit her intake or she starts bouncing off the walls." Or rearranging the furniture. In the entire house, including bedrooms. Or emptying the silverware drawer and the china cabinet to create fractal models. Or turning automobiles into airplanes.

"I see," Kate said, sitting down opposite them. "I don't think Chrono ever had that reaction to coffee."

"Different neural wiring," Shader sighed, and snagged a sandwich. "And I don't get pixilated, I'm _hyperactive."_

"Which is why you only get one cup of coffee, with no sugar," Joshua said with a smile. He filled his plate with a muffin, and a couple egg salad sandwiches that had been cut into triangles.

Kate poured herself a cup of coffee--with extra cream, and one sugar cube. "I realize you and Shader come as a pair. Ewan's made your position clear," she said. "And in light of the medical assistance you've recieved from her, I have no objection to her presence here." She hesitated a moment, and spoke directly to Shader. "There are however a few limitations and restrictions, are you willing to abide by them?"

"I think I need to know what they are first," Shader said quietly.

"The first is that you're not to go anywhere without an escort of some kind," Kate said. "The second is that you render whatever assistance you can during this particular crisis. The third is that you consent to a minor geas being placed on you."

Shader shivered, eyes fluttering closed as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I agree to the first and second terms," she said, sounding almost calm despite her pinned back ears. "The third--the third I'll only agree to if it's Azmaria Hendric holding the geas."

Joshua almost dropped his plate in surprise. "Shader!" He would have expected her to refuse something like a binding, or ask that he be the one in control of the geas.

"It can't be you, Joshua," Shader said. "It has to be someone in the Order."

Which made a certain kind of sense, but--"Why Azmaria?" Joshua asked, with Sister Kate echoing a half step behind.

"Because I never meant for those kids to die," Shader said lowly. "I did everything I could to keep their Ascension from killing them, and I failed. Azmaria should be the one to hold the geas, its the only way I can possibly make amends."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if anyone is a fan of Rosette's black dress when she was the Saint. I personally hated that dress--Rosette herself would probably have bad memory associations for it.
> 
> I really do prefer manga-Shader to anime Shader. (This tends to hold true for most of the manga-verse Sinners.)


	11. Broken Goddess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the demons neglect to tell Rosette about the GODDAMN PYTHONS.

Members of Duffau's cadre were waiting for them when they appeared at the Pandaemonium terminus of the gate. Beyond the hatch that would lead out to the hallway, Chrono could sense a crowd gathering. The aura of the crowd's combined anger left a coppery taste at the back of his throat, like blood. He felt a dangerous desire to assume his battle form, an impulse to attack before he could be attacked running through him like an electrical current. It was suddenly very difficult to breath, and his vision seemed to be clouded with red.

Gil stepped forward to speak to the leader of the cadre, while Rosette practically vibrated with impatience and worry. Chrono wished he could offer her some kind of comfort or reassurance, but knew anything he might say would sound hollow and false. _I'm worried too,_ was the only sentiment he could send her. Rosette smiled at him, and caught his hand in her own. Warmth filled him at her touch, accompanied by the thought that there was never enough time.

Then Rosette caught some of the muttered conversation going on between the leader of the escort and Gil. Her fury blazed brightly for a moment, somehow drowning the anger from outside. "No you are _not_ chaining Chrono up!" She shouted, and jumped of the dais, stomping over to where the now very surprised escort-leader stood.

The escort-leader gave Gil a helpless look, as if to say, _does she not realize I am twice her size?_ But Gil simply raised his hands, as if to say,_ didn't I warn you about her?_

"The Sinner is dangerous," the demon said slowly, his voice a deep bass rumble.

"The Sinner is_ mine,_ and you aren't dragging him around on a leash!" Rosette flushed, either from embarrassment over using such a possessive term, or because she was angry. Probably both. She glared up at the demon fearlessly.

Chrono tensed, relaxing only slightly when the leader of the escort smiled. "We could let you hold the leash," the demon said, and laughed at Rosette's indignant, slightly incoherent response. The demon had apparently mentally classified Rosette as a fledgling soldier, and was choosing to respond to her as such. "If you can truly control him, then we will not chain him," the demon said with a smirk.

Rosette flushed again--but instead of the invective Chrono expected, she nodded sharply. "I can," She said. "Chrono, come here."

Chrono obeyed, coming to stand beside Rosette. "My Liege?" He asked, spurred by some instinct or impulse to make it clear that she was his suzerain. The ripple of surprise among Duffau's cadre was very gratifying, somehow.

"Chrono, take your child form," she said.

"Mistress," he said in acknowledgement, and reshaped himself into his younger form. It felt oddly too small since he was nearly at full power, as if he were trying to wear clothing that no longer fit. The feeling faded as the power bled away, his now childish body unable to contain adult-level strength. There was another ripple of surprise from the escort, surprise that he'd deliberately weakened himself at the command of a human who was not a sorceress who had enslaved him, and who was no longer his Contractor.

"Was there anything else?" Rosette asked in a challenging tone.

The demon shook his head.

"Good," Rosette said.

Demons were packed two and three deep along the hallway, moving away sullenly as the escort pressed forward. The first attacks were psychic, hissing murmurs that thrilled along his nerves, filling him with their hatred and anger. _Traitor. Brotherkiller. Sinner._

Their hatred blinded him, opening mental wounds that had barely scabbed over. He shuddered, and stumbled against Rosette, who held him. "It's okay, we can do this," she whispered. "Just keep going, straight ahead."

Chrono nodded, and for a moment, leaned against her for a moment, wishing he had Rosette's boundless confidence. In a way, she reminded him of Aion, though he would never dare voice the comparison. Both she and Aion were single-minded and determined. Both thought along straight lines and never swerved or second-guessed. The only time he had seen her falter, had been just before her death.

The procession had stopped when he had stumbled, but continued on, now that he had recovered it moved forward again. As they continued onward, the attacks became physical. Demons threw themselves against the soldiers with increasing ferocity. The attacks were deflected by the escorts, seldom breaking through. When they did, Rosette warded him from the worst of the blows, using her spear like a staff as she fought his attackers off. Twice Chrono was nearly pulled into the crowd, and once, someone hit him in the shoulder with a thrown wrench.

By the time they reached the flyer bay, the only ones relatively unbruised were Gil and his two assistants. The crowd had fallen back, dissipating entirely when the procession reached the bay. Despite Rosette's black eye and split lip, she radiated glee because her habit hadn't been damaged. "Not even a rip!" She exulted, to the amusement of the others. "For once I don't look like a dancer in a burlesque show!" Glee turned into shock when she saw the flyers. "They look like Satella's fish!" She said, approaching the nearest.

"The reason why that is, is rather complicated, Miss Christopher," Gil said. "And we don't have much time."

* * *

It was hard not to gawk. Pandaemonium was like a world in a bottle. Just like in Chrono's memory, the "sky" was the color of mother-of-pearl, and the "sun" was a too-bright blue-white hemisphere at the apex of the ceiling. The air was warm and tropical, sweet with alien flowers. The landscape was terraced, rising up along the curving horizon, and toward the center and the edges were groupings of tall mesas that also appeared to be buildings. It was the strangest, most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The flyer was heading toward the central tower, to the Queen's Chamber. It was like something from one of Joshua's science fiction novels--and completely the opposite of anything she might have once expected.

If Rosette hadn't been so tightly wound she thought she might start spinning like a top, she probably would have fallen asleep, lulled by the heat, and the wind caused by the passage of the flyer. As it was, she found herself leaning against Chrono--who smiled at her. In the strange blue-white light his eyes looked more golden than their usual warm red. "This is going to be hard for both of us," Chrono said softly. His hand curled around hers.

"I know," she said softly. She had always run straight ahead, without looking back or hesitating. Now she had to wait, to stand by and watch--and she hated it.

The central tower was nearly empty, and eerily quiet, except for a hum that was more felt through the soles of her boots than heard. Rosette clasped Chrono's hand tightly as they were escorted to the Queen's Chamber by Gil and Duffau's soldiers. The Chamber was a roughly circular room with a domed ceiling. Wide hexagonal panels hung from the walls, and strange extrusions rose from the floor, their purpose unknown.

Roughly in the center of the room was a dais with an empty throne covered by a green cloth. Beyond the throne was a curtain of shimmering gray. Rosette could see the silhouette of a vaguely human or demonic figure behind the curtain. It was so still, she thought it must be some kind of statue.

Just before the dais was a hexagonal pool ten feet across full of some kind of black, oily looking liquid. To the right of that pool, on the first step of the dais stood Duffau and a demon wearing robes the same color as Gil's, though he also wore an ivory tabard over it. Duffau looked serene and calm, but the other demon looked as if he'd swallowed a lemon as he glared at Chrono and herself.

Gil stepped forward, and bowed first to the throne, and then to Duffau and the demon. "My Lord Duke, My Lord Regent, as commanded, we have brought the Sinner and his Magdalen, Rosette Christopher."

"You have done well, Gil," Duke Duffau said, and looked at her. His eyes glinted red for a moment. "Welcome, holy woman," Duffau said in ironic tones. "You must truly be a living saint to have so conquered the Sinner."

Rosette tried not to flinch, remembering how Aion had used her. _Demons can't resist twisting the knife._ Just as he'd driven Azmaria to tears to test her, now he tried the same with her. Awkwardly, she attempted a curtsey. She could almost hear Satella laughing at her, for her lack of grace. _Yeah well, some of us were too busy learning to shoot to take deportment classes, deb._

"The credit for that belongs to another. We have come, because you have asked, Duke Duffau," she said in as even a tone as she could manage. She'd probably flubbed a line or two of protocol there, but it would do. She swallowed and took a deep breath. "In the name of our alliance, I surrender my vassal Chrono the Sinner, the Crooked Horn, the Ignoble One to the justice of Pandaemonium." The lines came out mostly the way she'd been coached to say them, though her voice was strangled and weak toward the end. To her extreme discomfort, Chrono knelt down beside her, bowing over his knees with his forehead pressed to the floor.

"Since the Sinner has worked toward atonement for his sins, I Louhi, Regent of Pandaemonium rescind his punishment," the demon standing beside Duffau said sourly. "Rise, Chrono, and prepare yourself for Attunement."

Chrono stood, and bowed very low before stripping out of his clothes. Rosette made a little strangled noise of protest, and flushed at the sight of Chrono's nakedness. Even in his child-form, it wasn't something she wanted anyone else to see. "Nothing you haven't seen before," he said in a low voice. His eyes were laughing at her. Rosette hoped hers conveyed _you are so dead, buster, when I can get my hands on you._

He smiled at her, and stepped over to the pool and jumped in. The instant he hit the water, serpentine shapes roiled to the surface, wrapped around his arms and legs, and pulled him under. Rosette screamed, betrayal and sudden rage flooding her system as she dove toward the pool. Arms grabbed her, and she fought them furiously, kicking and punching the two technicians. "No, Rosette, that's supposed to happen," Rao said frantically. "We didn't bring him here just to kill right in front of you, Rosette, I swear it."

"You could have warned me!" Rosette shouted angrily. She didn't feel any calmer, but went limp to show that she wasn't going to fight them (for the moment, anyway). The two technicians eased up in their grasp, and helped set her back on her feet.

"Didn't Chrono tell you what would happen?" Sekhet asked.

"He said you get ducked in the water, he didn't say anything about _pythons!"_

"He probably didn't want to worry you," Rao said.

"I'm pretty damned worried now," Rosette growled. _I am going to kill that little bastard when I get my hands on him,_ she swore. With Chrono gone, she settled for glaring at all and sundry, daring them to say one word about her brief panic.

_"Rosette Christopher,"_ a woman's voice said. The voice was strangely directionless, but Rosette found her eyes drawn to the curtained off area behind the dais. _"Rosette Christopher,"_ the voice said again.

"Her voice," Louhi said, turning pale.

"Her voice," Duffau echoed in an oddly smug tone.

"Whose voice?" Rosette asked, disliking the cryptic comments already.

"Lillith, Pandaemonium's Core-brain," Duffau replied.

"She should not have activated! What are you playing at, Duffau?" Louhi demanded angrily.

"I'm not playing at anything," Duffau said. "All I have done here has been by Her Will."

"The Core-brain has no will!"

_"Rosette Chrisopher,"_ the voice said a third time.

"My Lord," Duffau said with a malicious smile. "Think on the possibility you may be mistaken." He looked at Rosette. "Go to her, you can do nothing for Chrono, waiting here." With a gesture, he indicated the shimmering curtain behind the dais.

Rosette nodded, a shiver of nerves racing down her spine as she started to hand off her spear to Sekhet. She stopped at a slight headshake from the technician. The "no" was seconded by Duffau, though the Regent looked even more lemony at the idea. Cautiously, Rosette worked her way around the dais to the curtain, which turned out to be some kind of barrier, instead of fabric. It gave slightly under her touch, but there was no substance to it. Walking through it felt like static from a wool rug, all over her body.

Behind the curtain was a mermaid.

She was the most beautiful, the most horrifying thing Rosette had ever seen. The armless woman's torso rose from a fish shape that was roughly the size of a Studebaker. _Maybe two, end to end._ Where the torso met the fish body, she could see loops of intestines and other organs suspended in some kind of translucent medium. Wings rose from the woman's shoulders, and horns crowned her brow. Intent eyes in a delicate, oddly familiar face studied her. "Who and what are you?" Rosette asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

_"Core-brain 'Lillith'." _The lips moved, but the words seemed to form in Rosette's head, without being heard by her ears. _"'Lillith' maintains the structural integrity of Pandaemonium and monitors all mobile units."_ Lillith smiled. _"What your kind call 'demons' Rosette Christopher."_

_Mobile units._ The term made Rosette uneasy as she recalled fragments of things she had learned from Gil and Chrono. _They're all part of her somehow. Her children..._ "Why did you call me here?" Rosette asked.

_"What is the most **important **chess piece on the board?"_ Lillith asked instead of answering.

"The king." If you had the king, you won the game.

Lillith smiled. _"What is the most** powerful **piece?"_

When the floor opened up beneath her feet, Rosette didn't even have time to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Duffau is paraphrasing Oliver Cromwell. The entire quote goes "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. ..." Louhi should give him _such_ a smack.


	12. Ghosts in the Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rosette and Chrono ascend.

Pandaemonium shook, a massive tremor that knocked Duffau and the others to their knees. Several of the guards cried out, and one of the elder-technicians swore and their feet were knocked out from under them by the tremor. "Duffau, what have you done?" Louhi shouted over the trembling roar of shifting, shuddering panels of Legion.

"Hopefully, saved us all," Duffau said. His wings had extended instinctively at the quake. As the first tremors passed, he drew them in, and settled into a half-kneeling posistion. He offered a hand to support Louhi, who had been thrown flat. Louhi glared sulferously at him, and caught his hand in a hard, angry grip. Duffau drew a harsh, inward breath as pain shot up his arm. _"Damn you, this is not the time!" _He shouted silently at his brother. At the same time he signalled his now worried cadre to stand down, which they did, though they radiated reluctance.

"How does this save us, Duffau?" Louhi growled.

"Lillith identified her as the most suitable candidate as a replacement for the Core-Brain," Duffau said. "That's why you sent me to look for her and the Sinner, wasn't it?"

"That was before she was infused with the Sinner's Legion," Louhi said. "And this is not the rite by which the Interface is created!"

"I know," Duffau said. "This is the Queen's Test."

"She is human!"

"So is the Core-brain," Duffau said. "A tangled mass of humanity holding our world together--their unwilling sacrifice ensuring our survival."

Bitter fury and frustration radiated from Louhi, but there was also a sense that Louhi was listening, was trying to understand. "How could a human prevail, where our Sisters could not?" Louhi asked.

"Brother, release my hand, and I will show you," Duffau said. When Louhi let go, Duffau sat back on his heels, and parted his robes and armor underneath, revealing skin shiny and pocked, as if he'd been burned with acid. "These burns were caused by Rosette Christopher, when she was under the control of the Sinner Aion. Two members of my cadre were slain when she dashed her blood into their faces. You'll recall my Lord, that our Queen's attacks resulted in unhealing wounds."

Louhi stared, obviously horrified by the trailing burns that covered Duffau's torso. "How could this be? What did Aion _do _to the Madgalen?"

Duffau laughed bitterly at Louhi's unknowing paraphrase of words he himself had spoken. "It was an experiment, an experiment that Aion turned into a weapon," Duffau said. "Through her, he was able to create a sort of psychic web, linking the humans within her, or rather, Aion's reach together." He paused for a moment, knowing he was skirting yet another kind of heresy.

"You're saying she's_already _a Queen?" Louhi asked, disbelief clear in his tone.

"Of a sort," Duffau admitted. "Say better a kind of proto-queen, limited in power and scope, but still possessing the traits of a true Queen."

When the floor opened up beneath her feet, Rosette didn't even have time to scream. The black snakes sank needle fangs into her arms, her legs, her chest. They wrapped their coils around her, and pulled her down and down toward a bright light. Rosette struggled against the snakes, but it was like fighting with rubber hoses filled with iron ball bearings. Then in some manner she didn't understand, down became up, and the snake things released her to drift up into the center of the light. For a moment she windmilled, spinning and tumbling--but never quite falling--at the slightest movement.

Rosette held on tightly to the spear, and tried to slow her spin while her stomach did flips. "Hey! What's the big idea?" She shouted. Her voice echoed back.

**"What is the most powerful piece?" **A chorus of voices asked. A shape took form in the light; multi-armed, multi-bodied, like a Hindu goddess, or demon. A body made of glass and starfire, almost blinding her in an enviroment that was making her eyes water from the glare. The main torso was winged and horned like Lillith, and her hair streamed out as if she were underwater.

"The queen," Rosette said hoarsely, her throat suddenly dry. The presence of this being was overwhelming--terrifying. "What does that have to do with me?"

The thing didn't reply, instead it moved toward her, hands reaching out to snare her. Heart hammering in her chest, Rosette tried to dodge and went spinning away. The creature dove after her, crying out in a hundred voices. Rosette flailed, trying to get into a position where she could try to defend herself, when another form of light placed itself between her and the demon. _An angel? _Rosette thought, confused. The figure lifted a hand and brought it down in a sweeping gesture that rippled outward like heat distortion on the street on a hot day. The air flashed green, and the demon collided with the barrier.

The angel turned to face Rosette, a brilliant smile on her face. She knew who this had to be. "Mary," Rosette said, one hand unconsciously pressed to where the last stigmata had appeared. It came to her that Mary had been watching over her--had been watching over her and Chrono for a long time. It made her angry, it made her want to break down and cry for all the times something terrible had happened, for every hurt and wound they had both suffered. Why couldn't you help us!

_"All I could do was love you both," _Mary said gently._"You are both so strong, Rosette. You have both come so far."_

"I'm _not_ strong," Rosette said, voice breaking."Aion..." _Aion broke me, I incited riots and destroyed the lives of so many people because of him._

_"No, you broke yourself," _Mary said gently. _"Aion gave you a version of the truth that caused you to take responsibility for things which were not your fault. He knew you well enough to know that you would blame yourself for what happened in San Francisco. Aion used you, the way he used Joshua and so many others to further his goal, to destroy Pandaemonium, and to remake the world." _

Rosette shivered as an image formed in her mind. Pandaemonium dissolving into its component Legion, spreading like a disease, or a great wave, until it engulfed the world. And then, strange, alien forms moving across an even stranger landscape. Cities that seemed as if they'd been grown, not built. People, of a kind, working, playing, arguing, going to school. A new world, built on the bones of the old. Aion had wanted to destroy _everything, _to create a world with order, but no laws. A kind of anarchy where everyone was a king of their own country, and no one bowed from fear, begged from privation, or warred from hatred. Where everyone was both Sinner and Saint, and freedom was a great leap forward into an abyss of light.

_"No government, no masters, no servants, no God or Devil, no snake, no Garden of Eden, just the Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life, grown so close together they become a single Tree," _Aion's voice whispered. Almost, Rosette could see him, an indistinct shape beyond Mary, spectacles glinting as he pushed them higher up his nose.

It in no way seemed strange to see him in this place. "You were going to destroy the world!" She shouted. "The world you wanted to create would have been at the cost of millions of lives!"

_"Life has been nearly destroyed many times in the history of this world," _Mary said, gentle and somehow implacable. Another image came to her, reflected in Mary's eyes. The world, dying and reborn over and over again, life spreading from the oceans to the land, and from the land to the water, only to be destroyed by the slow march of glaciers, by fire, famine and drought, by meteors and volcanic explosions. And beyond it all, from some unimaginable perspective, were the souls of the departed, watching all of it, then rejoining the great cycle of spiritual energy. Pandaemonium drained life away from that cycle, and gave nothing in return. _"Life has always returned, because life is stubborn. Life _will_return, in the face of this disaster, should it come to pass, Rosette, but that life will be half demonic."_

_"The alternative," _Aion said with a feral half-smile, _"is to allow Pandaemonium to continue draining the world's soul. _She_ is your true enemy, not I." _

Rosette glared at the shadowy form. "You certainly aren't my friend, you bastard. Not after what you did to me, what you did to Chrono and Joshua!"

Aion smirked.

_"He speaks the truth," _Mary said softly._ "Pandaemonium is the Enemy of the world."_

"What do I do?"_How can I fight her? How do I fight her? _

_"Take her to yourself, you've done it before, after all," _Aion said. _"Of course, she might just swallow you whole, the way she ate up her daughters, and her previous brain-emulators."_

"What do you--oh God." She remembered what Aion had done to her. The spell. It had been like being at the center of a web, it had been like _being_ the web. They believed in her, had given her power, which she had used, thinking she had been helping them. That she had been saving them, healing them. Their minds had been hers, and Aion had supported her, had been her anchor point. _Take these poor sinners to yourself, Mary, save their lives, their souls, _he had said.

He had driven hundreds of men, women and children mad.

"That spell was broken," Rosette said. _You bastard. _She gripped her spear more tightly, wanting to beat the smirk off of his face.

_"You still contain the potential," _Mary said.

"But how do I--" Rosette began, then fell silent. She already knew. God help her, she could remember. _Take these poor sinners to yourself. _Aion had opened the doors to her self with a kiss, and she had been the key that had unlocked the rage, fear and sense of injustice in human hearts. It occurred to her that Aion was also a key. _And on the other side of the door will be Chrono._

She smiled at Aion, and the demon's smirk faded. Seeing her intent, he started to move away--but it was already too late. She had him already. She knew him in ways that probably only Chrono or Joshua knew him. "No," Aion said. "Don't." She touched him, one hand over his heart, and he flinched--then froze, because she told him too.

"The connection has to go both ways, doesn't it?" Rosette asked. "And it takes two to fly this ship."

_"Yes," _Aion said, as if the words had been pulled out of him.

Rosette nodded, then caught Aion by the back of the head, and kissed him. The connection came to life with the intensity of a lightning bolt. She forced him open, and felt-heard him scream. _You did this to hurt Chrono, you did this to _me_, but it goes both ways, you manipulative bastard. _

_"You can't. You can't really take them all in," _Aion thought frantically. _"You're still only human." _He had only suggested it because he believed she would fail. That she would die or be absorbed by Pandaemonium, that Pandaemonium would in turn die, and his world would be born.

_"I might fail, but I don't care," _Rosette snarled. _I will take this ship, or die trying. _She reached into Aion, and found the master command codes. "Mary," she said aloud. Mary nodded, and the barrier vanished--and Pandaemonium overwhelmed them both.

* * *

**The Master remembered seeing his ship for the first time, just before he was installed. She was a warm, brilliant presence in his mind that drowned out all others. He could sense her excitement, and curiosity as she sensed him. The song of work wrapped around them both, and he thought that maybe the stories he'd heard about love at first perception were true. **

_ **...We will be dead soon.** _

**The last thing the Master saw was the disc of the blue and green world coming toward him/the Ship as he/they fell into the atmosphere. Despite his fear, despite knowing he wouldn't survive, he utterly refused to accept any possibility of failure--the Ship would survive. The Universe runs on Love and Numbers, he thought, and then, thought nothing at all. **

_ **...And we have lost our Master.** _

Ship systems that had been dormant for millenia activated. The abnormality in the core was like a knife in the chest, a line of agony that made it difficult to breathe. He drowned in memories that weren't his, shuddering with emotions he couldn't name or define. The Master, and then Aion, the only other person to have reached the Primordial Core, where the memory files were stored. Chrono was aware of Rosette's arms around him, her body pressed close to his. They were naked, and both damp from the pool--when had she entered it?

He could sense that she had been Tuned, and that her level was the same as his, and something more. There was no difference between her, or the Ship. To his perceptions they were one and the same, and some part of him--the part of him that wasn't the Master--felt a sort of distant panic at this. Mary had been overshadowed by Pandaemonium, would the same thing happen to Rosette?

"Chrono, are you alright? Speak to me!" Her words were echoed thousands of times over as every demon (mobile unit) heard and repeated it. The realization of what just happened descended like a bucket of ice._**Oh god. What's happened to me? **_A memory of Joshua flashed through her mind, of Joshua at the orphanage, eyes wide and staring, unsane and bleeding.

"You're the Queen," Chrono said, and shuddered at the sudden explosion of horrified denial from Rosette.

_"Try to calm down, Miss Christopher," _Gil interjected.

_"Before you fry someone's brains," _Sekhet said.

**"How. **_Oh."_Rosette's mental voice seemed startled as she recieved the information. _"That's better," _she said, her mental voice now much softer, and no longer echoing from mind to mind. _"We have to move the ship. Mary said They still haven't decided whether letting Pandaemonium continue to consume the souls of the living is better or worse than allowing Pandaemonium's death to destroy or warp all Earthly life."_

"Mary? They?" Mary had been here, and he hadn't seen?

"The ship can't fly," Louhi protested.

"It's shaped like a fish, isn't it? It can swim!" Rosette said, exasperated.

Chrono silently asked a question, and recieved an answer. "That would probably work," he said. "I can--we can hold Her together, for a time." He looked up at Rosette. "Where?"

"Someplace far away with almost no people," Rosette said.

He could see the place she intended, and the part of him that was the Master was already plotting the course. The rest of him thought, _Antarctica? Rosette, you are off your nut!_ "You said Mary spoke to you," Chrono said.

"She's here. Tangled up in--that," Rosette said. _That_meaning Pandaemonium's Core.

"The mind does not survive death," Louhi said, sounding disturbed. "The only thing that remains is a faded reflection that soon fades."

"That's not true," Chrono said. "But we don't have time to argue about it." Pandaemonium shuddered beneath him, and the great engines began to heat--and the pain in his chest became worse. He tried not to show it, but Rosette knew--her arms tightened around him, as if she could shield him from all hurts. _It's not my pain, it's Hers,_ he thought. "If we're going to do this, you need to sit down on the throne, Rosette."

She didn't want to leave him, but she did. She sat down in the throne, and activated systems and arrays that hadn't been used in thousands of years. _"Activation. Gestalt," _she said.

_"Acknowledged,"_Chrono replied. Whitefire ran along his nerves and spread, connecting him to the ship, and through Rosette, to every demon in Pandaemonium. It hurt, and that pain reverbrated back to him a thousand times over.

_"I'm sorry, but we have to do this," _Rosette said.

**You're destroying our world!**

_This is not the world, the world is Outside!_

**It is not ours. We are not a part of it.**

_Pandaemonium is dying. Some of you (us) have fled the destruction, but it will overtake you in the end. O you who have no care for the world outside, very shortly the outside will come IN, and we will all die._

A pause, then, **assent.**

_Gestalt engaged. Engines engaged. Let's get this show on the road._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paraphrases of volumes seven and eight.


	13. Tree of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a happy ending.

**Aion went first because of age, not because of strength or intelligence. ** _ **"You're only older by five minutes!" ** _ **Chrono laughed in his mind, a familiar protest that made Aion grin in response. He wiped the grin off his face at the disapproving frown of an elder.**

_ **"This is a solemn occasion little brother, stop making me laugh!" ** _ **He mock scolded. After bowing to the gathered elders and stripping, Aion jumped into the pool. The needle-bites of the connectors stung, but the pain was brief, fading as he ascended. **

**Into horror.**

**His world, with its order and structure was a soulless machine. The preceptors and elders he'd been taught to obey and respect were overseers for masters who were millenia dead. He and his brothers were slaves--less than slaves, they were tools, living machines. All that he had been taught was a lie, and worse than a lie, it was a monstrous web of ignorance and self-deception that had been perpetrated for centuries. But of all those horrors, the worst was the living corpse of his mother, and the tangled screaming chaos of Pandaemonium Herself. **

**Sanity frayed and broke as Aion knelt on the floor, clutching his head in agony. Distantly, he was aware of the elders pronouncing his death sentence. The only true things in the world were the frantic questions of his cadre, and his brother. Possessive rage and terror broke through the fog of horror--they would not harm his cadre! Run! He screamed with voice and mind. Get out of here! The soldiers were closing in around him. Aion bared his teeth in a snarl, and launched himself at the nearest, determined to make his own escape. **

_ **I will break the System of contradictions and lies, I swear it.** _

"Joshua!"

The voices were frightened, surprised, alien--and the memories that weren't his felt more real than what he saw with his own eyes. Joshua flinched away from the grasping hands and hovering faces. The room was large, with tables and chairs and too many people. He was on the floor, and his head felt as if it were going to explode. He coiled (recoiled) prepared to attack or flee at the slightest provocation.

"No, don't touch him!" Shader warned, stepping between him and the others. "Back off!" She sounded angry-worried, but not as if she percieved the others as a threat.

_I'm the threat,_ Joshua thought, confused and dazed. _But I can't hurt anyone anymore. _

The familiar, unfamiliar figures moved away, and became less threatening. He could attach names to faces now. Anne. Mary. Claire. Azmaria. Ewan. "I'm all right," Joshua said, "I'll be all right." He was curled up on the cafeteria floor, and his throat ached, as if he'd been shouting. "Something--they did something. My head hurts," he said, and hated the slight whine in his voice.

"Who, Joshua?" Ewan asked.

Joshua shook his head, wincing at the pain. "I can't--not here. Sister Kate's office," he said. "Shader, help me up, please." The demon offered her hand, and helped him to his feet. He felt a shiver run through her body as their hands touched. She gave him a wide-eyed look, but didn't say anything.

"You're somehow in contact with Chrono?" Sister Kate asked hesitantly after Joshua had told her the entire story. It had come out end first and middle last, with a great deal of backtracking.

"Not exactly," Joshua said. "According to Shader, I've been picking up an echo from him, but this was more. A lot more. It was a memory--but it wasn't Chrono's." Aion's, and not just Aion's, there had been something, someone else, and the words _The Universe is run on Love and Numbers. _The last thought of a being who had died trying to save his ship. "They did something to Chrono. A ritual. It tunes a demon's Legion to Pandaemonium."

"The higher you reach, the stronger your mind, the higher your rank," Shader said softly. "But Aion reached too high a level. Th-they said Chrono was the same way. We had to die, because there was something wrong with us. But there wasn't, there wasn't! We passed all the tests, my preceptors had me teaching first level biology and second level drafting. Aion was already auditing The History of Long Term Strategy. They--there were soldiers, and Aion screamed for us to run. We ran and hid." She curled up in a miserable ball in her chair, her eyes bright with tears, shivering with memory.

_Shell-shocked, _Joshua thought. Fifty years hadn't erased the horror from the demon's mind. Then again, time hadn't cured Aion, either. "There was nothing wrong with you. The elders panicked," Joshua said gently. "You did nothing wrong." He thought that these would be things Aion would say, if he were here.

Shader shivered again, but didn't reply.

"Why did they perform this ritual on Chrono, if they had so severe a reaction to what happened to Aion?" Kate asked, with a worried glance at Shader.

_And we have lost our Master. _Joshua shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think I can really speculate on what they might be planning."

Sister Kate's lips pressed together in a thin line, obviously not liking his answer. She seemed about to question him further, when the sound of footsteps could be heard thumping down the hall. The office door burst open, and a breathless sister rushed into the office. "Sister Kate! Planes have spotted a huge fish monster off the coast of New Jersey! It's the size of Manhattan island!"

"A fish the size of Manhattan?" Sister Kate asked, astonished. "Is it moving toward the shore?"

"No, it's heading out to sea, going in a southerly direction--but there was a tidal waves, and an earth quake." The sister said. "It...it's been radioing a warning."

"What warning?" Ewan asked.

"'If you even _think_ of attacking, we'll kick your asses to Kingdom Come.'"

* * *

They were drawn together.

One to control, and one to direct. Hundreds of hands to repair, eyes to see, minds to think--the song of work rose around them, sending and recieving information.

They were in the high place, and they saw the world, and it was theirs.

There was pain. Chrono felt it in his back and in his chest. Pandaemonium laboring to breath, her engines shuddering and overloading. Brothers and sisters were dying, trying to repair the damage as fast as it occurred. He could hear Rosette crying, weeping for their deaths with a grief that was only partially her own.

After weeks of little food or sleep, they reached their destination. The ship pulled free of the ocean, engines and warp-core straining, and rose up into the air.

**Where? **A voice asked.

**Inland. Mountains.**

The ship turned inland, heading toward the nearest mountain range. The ship found a narrow, ice covered valley, and set down. Ice and snow melted into water and steam where the bottom and sides of the ship made contact. _"We have to dismantle the ship," _Rosette said. _"The damaged core must be deactivated." _

Fear radiated through the gestalt. **We can't survive without the ship! The ship is home!**

_"We can survive without the ship," _Chrono said. _"Let them go. Let the dead die into the Astral Lines." _He could sense them all around, demon and human souls trapped by Pandaemonium. To most demons, demons who had lived all their lives within Pandaemonium, their presence was like a smell that you learned to ignore. For Chrono, who had spent most of his life sleeping in a tomb, or living in the World Above, their presence was a miasma. He could sense their disbelief and fear--they couldn't really sense the dead pressing in all around them, and they doubted his and Rosette's perceptions.

**How? **The gestalt asked doubtfully. **This is not within our design/function/parameters.**

_"Bring the strongest here," _Rosette said. _"I will show you what to do." _

There was a strangeness in her voice that made Chrono turn from the station he had stood at for weeks. Rosette sat in the throne/control chair, her eyes gray and distant, as they had been when she had been the Saint. "Rosette," he whispered hoarse, suddenly struck by fear for her.

_"It's all right, Chrono," _Rosette said. When she spoke, it was as if two other people were speaking at the same time. She held out her hand to him. _"Take my hand."_

His first few steps were stiff and wooden. He stumbled, feeling an echo of the fear that had consumed him when he had first seen Rosette standing at Aion's side. When he had seen her utter lack of recognition, when he had seen her walk away from him. He caught her hand in his, as if he were drowning, falling to his knees at her feet. Her hand was warm, almost hot to the touch. Something moved through him then, something that threaded into his mind and opened something there. "Rosette?"

_"Don't be afraid, Chrono. We need your strength." _The triune voice said. Behind Rosette's eyes was a dark haired, oddly familiar looking woman, and Mary.

_"You have it,"_Chrono whispered. _You will always have it._

The strongest members of the gestalt gathered, forming a rough circle along the walls of the Queen's Chamber. He felt Rosette activate something--and the room filled with a blaze of light where no shadows could survive. "The Primordial Core," someone whispered.

Information flowed through him from Rosette. **The connection goes both ways. You/We must call the Astral Line here.**

**As Above, so Below,**someone said.

* * *

Rosette woke up slowly from a floating sort of dream where she swam through shoals of stars that sang with voices like radio static. She stirred, stretching in a soft bed that had a still warm Chrono-sized indent in it to her right. "Chrono?" He was two rooms away, cooking. She felt a warm pulse of emotion from him, and smiled. Her stomach growled at the thought of food, but she didn't feel like getting up--even though she'd just woken up, she felt exhausted. How long have I been asleep? She could sense Legion-hum, and the minds of demons close by. Their conversations were a slightly louder, deeper hum, and she knew that if she wanted, she could listen in. Like a party line, she thought.

Chrono entered, bearing a tray with a bowl of what smelled like meat broth of some kind, and a glass with some kind of vaguely citrussy smelling red liquid. He smiled at her. "Do you need help sitting up?"

She shook her head, and scooted up into a seated position. Chrono set the tray on her lap. The broth was dark gold, with little bits of meat floating around in it. It smelled vaguely like chicken. Rosette picked up the spoon, and cautiously sampled the broth. It was good, but vaguely fishy. "How long have I been asleep?" The last thing she remembered was the sky lighting up in great green and blue waves.

"About two weeks since we got far enough inland," Chrono said. "We were able to dismantle the ship--after."

After. With a pang, she remembered what they'd had to do, to destroy the Core. "If there had been any other way," she said. Lillith had been in so much pain, Lillith and the souls of hundreds of women all tangled together, trapped by the Astral body of the Core. Rosette didn't know how the old Queen had endured being surrounded by the restless dead. _Maybe to her, it was just noise. _

"I know," Chrono said. "She--she was already dead. All we did was free her from her burden." He sensed her discomfort, and smiled reassuringly at her. "Once the ship was dismantled, we infused most of a mountain with Legion, and began shaping rooms. We were able to save most of the gardens, which is where the juice came from."

"Where did the soup come from?" Rosette asked. Demons didn't usually keep livestock, because that would have overtaxed Pandaemonium's life support system--and they preferred to hunt or fish. Chrono looked very innocent, and tried to close his mind to her--but not before she caught a glimpse of the animal. "I'm eating _penguin?"_

"Well, you've been drinking the broth the last few times you woke up, and you didn't object then."

"That would probably be because I was half asleep and didn't know what I was doing," Rosette said in mock annoyance. She didn't really object to eating penguin, if that's what was availible, though she wasn't going to admit that to Chrono. _When you think about it, penguin is a lot less gross than some of the things I've heard of that go into hot dogs._ She drank more of the broth. "What are we going to do now?" She asked after finishing the broth. "We did what Duffau wanted--sort of. But what's going to happen next?"

"You're the Queen," Chrono said, taking the tray away and setting it down on a low table near the bed. "What happens next is up to you."

_I'm not even seventeen yet! _"I don't know what to do," Rosette said. It wasn't like she could abdicate, or just leave. The interconnected web of demon minds were a part of her now, hers to use the way Chrono had been able to control and pilot the ship. It scared her, having that kind of power over anyone (she very carefully didn't think about the amount of power she had always had over Chrono.)

Chrono smiled at her. "You'll do what you usually do, bull straight ahead without thinking things through." He tried to dodge, but she was too fast for him. She got him into a headlock, and began to give him the noogie attack of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight paraphrase/quote of volume eight of the manga.
> 
> I'd like to thank Kdorian for helping me get Pandaemonium from point A to point B.


End file.
